


A Life Within Walls

by GoodGuyJean (orphan_account)



Series: My Main Canon Jearmin AU [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, CW: Internalized Homophobia, Jearmin - Freeform, Jearmin Week 2019, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Problematic Eren, cw: description of dissociation, cw: homophobia, cw: homophobic slurs, cw: minor ableist language (consistent with canon dialog)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-08-10 14:23:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20136910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/GoodGuyJean
Summary: Armin Arlert grew up a "heretic" in Shiganshina; always questioning the status quo and adept at keeping secrets. Determined to see the world outside the Walls and prepared to make terrible sacrifices to do so, Armin stumbles when he falls in love with another soldier, the uncomfortably honest Jean Kirstein. As Armin and Jean continue to fight side-by-side in a war started long before their time, Armin struggles to open up, fearful of his own feelings and their consequences.A fic created for Jearmin Week 2019. Chapters are written to fit two theme prompts each; these prompts are listed at the beginning of each chapter. Major spoilers for after the end of season 3, up until about chapter 116 of the manga.





	1. Wall Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter based on the first two Jearmin Week 2019 prompts, Library and Forbidden Relationship.

_Year 847, at the training camp of the Southern 104th Cadet Class, just north of Trost_

“Did you hear about Derek?”

Armin’s fingers twitch, smudging charcoal across the diagram of 3DM gear he’d been studying. He looks up to find Marco watching him earnestly, deep brown eyes wide with . . . something. Excitement? No . . . concern? Or maybe something darker . . . fear?

Armin forces his eyes back to his diagram.

“I heard he was kicked out this morning.” For possessing heretical materials, he almost continues, but stops himself. Maybe it’s better to pretend he’s not paying all that much attention this type of scandal. “He was always talking about leaving anyway. He kept saying he was ‘tired of playing soldier,’ remember?”

Armin certainly remembers. Derek Fletcher had been remarkable among the recruits for his laziness alone. Several times he’d been caught lounging outside the privies, dragging his feet in every task to avoid training as much as possible. Armin also remembers the very public punishments Derek endured for slacking. So, in a certain sense, it wasn’t surprising that someone like Derek would eventually decide regular meals and a roof over his head weren’t worth strenuous military discipline and frequent humiliations.

What _did _surprise Armin was the notion that Derek was a heretic in addition to an idler. Having known the other boy for the better part of a year now, Armin had a difficult time believing it—Derek grumbled when the officers barked orders, yes, but he had not been particularly critical of the military in any systematic way. And he’d never, as far as Armin was aware, questioned the necessity of the Walls or shown any interest in the outside world. Like most of the other trainees, he’d wanted to enlist in the Garrison or the Military Police when he finished his stint in basic although he certainly hadn’t been trying hard enough to earn a spot as an MP. But then again, there wasn’t much point that Armin could see in framing the lackluster trainee. Commander Shadis kicked out cadets all the time for a myriad of perceived failings, so why invent a story about Derek being a heretic? The only two answers he could come up with were that either Derek was extremely good at hiding his true views (but then why attract attention to himself by shirking his duties?), or someone had planted the material among his things. But who? A rival? Someone within the military hierarchy? And then why? To send a message, to make an example of an easily expendable recruit? Was such an effort really necessary?

A true “heretic” himself, this whole development made Armin very nervous. Especially because it was being brought to his attention by Marco Bodt, a cadet who made no secret of his love for the king. Even more alarming was that Marco was now watching him carefully, obviously assessing his reaction to the news of Derek’s expulsion. Marco, for all his apparent sheep-like devotion to the royal family, was far cleverer than Derek. Worse yet, Armin actually enjoyed his company, finding him to be thoughtful and observant about almost every subject except state propaganda. He didn’t like that idea that he would have to become more guarded around Marco or even give up their tentative alliance to keep his secrets . . . but he would be willing to go that far or further to protect his hard-earned place in the Cadet Corps.

“Yeah, that’s true about Derek,” Marco continues haltingly. “But I, um, well, I think I know what they actually found when they searched his stuff . . . well, maybe I shouldn’t say. I guess I don’t know for certain what they found, but . . .” He pauses, eyes darting to the flickering light of the twin candles between them. He taps his stylus against the table, a sign of his distress that’s visible even in the dimness of the library, their preferred study haunt because it’s almost always empty. To be fair to the other cadets, the “library” is really a glorified closet with some shelves full of very basic reference materials and is really only useful if one needs a quiet space to work and think.

Or share secrets.

Now it’s Armin’s turn to watch Marco and wonder what Marco is trying to meta-communicate to him. Maybe Marco has somehow discovered what Armin has stashed within the mattress of his bunk—his inheritance from his grandfather, a trove of knowledge far more illuminating than anything contained within this tiny, stuffy hole. Maybe Marco, in his own careful way, is trying to warn Armin—or is that what Armin wants to think, because he likes Marco against his better judgment?

_Don’t slip up. You know there’s no one you can really trust here besides Eren and Mikasa, least of all someone who professes undying loyalty to the king!_

He keeps waiting for Marco to explain, but the other boy only shakes his head and scribbles a note near the fuel canisters on his diagram. Marco’s said too much now though; Armin has to know what’s on his mind, why Marco wants to talk with him in particular about Derek’s supposed heresy. He licks his lips and prompts, “What did they find . . . do you think?” He adds the last bit as a precaution. The subjective is less threatening, easier to back away from if you realize you’re wrong later.

Keeping his gaze on his idly drifting pencil, Marco mumbles, “Sometimes I kinda tidy up for others before morning inspection, after breakfast before they get back. It’s hard to do a proper hospital corner . . . anyway, er, one time I found something poking out from Derek’s pillow. Um . . . dirty pamphlets.”

“But half the boys have those,” Armin can’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. Is Marco more naïve than he thought? Of course, such pamphlets were confiscated by the officers if they found one that had been improperly concealed, but he hadn’t heard of anyone getting more than an extra week of latrine duty for being caught out. Perhaps someone raised as religiously as Marco obviously was would conflate personal erotic materials with heresy but . . . well, Marco must then be even more sheltered than Armin had imagined.

Marco shakes his head with surprisingly violence. “It wasn’t just any pamphlet . . . it was, well, it was a pamphlet about m . . . men.”

“Oh.”

Armin’s mind races to process this new information. Same-sex relationships are taboo, of course. Before he joined the military, before the fall the fall of Wall Maria, sometimes other kids had taunted him with names like “fairy” and “queer” because of his more effeminate appearance. Maybe there were still whispers, but no one had said anything to him for a while. Maybe he’d outgrown it? Anyway, taboo was not the same as heresy . . . was it? “Wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t they say though? That he was . . . that they found . . . that?”

Marco shrugs. “I . . . well, I don’t snoop, but I saw the officers pull something out from under his pillow this morning and, um, that’s where he was hiding it. So, I think that’s the heretical material they were talking about. Maybe they found something hidden in the pages, I dunno . . .”

It obviously costs Marco a lot to voice anything like a suspicion about his superior officers. His cheeks are flushed, and his words are slow, as if he’s trying to swallow them back. But they have to come out for some reason, he has to tell Armin that he suspects the officers are lying, or at least obscuring the truth.

_And if they look at me while they’re sniffing for heretics to make examples of . . . they might actually find something._

They lock eyes across their small table, Marco’s silence and awkward pauses communicating more than his words.

_He’s warning me_.

Armin’s heart pounds in his ears. So, Marco _is _suspicious that Armin has something to hide, but has decided to try to help him. Why? “I see,” is all he manages to reply.

Marco nods once, jerkily, then bends back to the task at hand. After a few moments of scratching away in silence, he says in a forcefully cheerful tone, “I wish we could ask Jean for help, he really understands the gear, doesn’t he? He’d be such a good soldier if he wasn’t so . . . so . . .” he fumbles for a word.

“Stubborn,” Armin supplies without really thinking, staring down at his own diagram with unseeing eyes. _Has Marco ever “tidied up” my bed? Even if he did, he shouldn’t have been able to find my book. I never took him for a snooper either . . . I guess I’ll have to be extra careful with him now, either way._

Marco’s answering chuckle sounds genuine. “Yeah, that’s the word for him. Stubborn. But I get the feeling that he like . . . pretends like he’s worse than he is though, you know? Like . . . don’t you think he actually cares about people?”

“Jean?” Armin’s struggling to keep up with the twists in this conversation. Why are they talking about Jean Kirstein, of all possible subjects? What does Jean have to do with the higher ups being more vigilant about searching the cadets’ things? Is Marco talking in some kind of code? Trying to figure it out, he considers Jean. Stubborn, yes, but ridiculously skilled with the gear. He would indeed be a good soldier, if he stopped badmouthing the authorities behind their backs all the time . . . was Marco trying to say that he suspected Jean of being some kind of heretic too? Jean was certainly a better candidate than Derek, but he was too honest about his desire for getting into the Military Police so he could have a cushy life. He had no interest in the outside world at all. No . . . Marco wasn’t saying that, he didn’t seem the same kind of tense as when he started this conversation. He was smiling softly to himself now, his shoulders’ more relaxed. Maybe talking about Jean was just his way of changing the subject to something more “normal.”

Odd.

“Well, I get why you might not like him,” Marco continues hastily. “I mean, he and Eren are always going at it. And you’re Eren’s best friend, so it must bother you to see that. But when he’s not around Eren, I get this sense that he like . . . really gets people, you know? Like, he’s gruff, but he’s actually listening to you when you say something.”

Armin frowns. Is Marco . . . blushing? It’s hard to tell in this lighting, but his cheeks do look a little bit red under his freckles.

“Jean seems like he’s pretty smart,” Armin concedes, thinking back on their classes. “And I guess he can’t help it that his face looks so mean.”

Marco frantically wipes at an errant smudge on his paper. “People always say that, but you know, once you get passed his expression, I think he’s pretty handsome . . . in an objective way, you know.”

Handsome? What?

“And yeah he’s smart!” Marco beams at Armin, like a proud teacher with his favorite pupil. “When I said that to Bertolt, he seemed surprised, but Jean’s definitely paying attention even when he doesn’t seem like it.”

Armin blinks over at his study companion, the pieces of the puzzle fitting together finally.

Marco isn’t warning him that their commanding officers are hunting for possible heretics and using any excuse to kick to them out, he’s warning him that they’re on the lookout for boys who show interest in other boys. Because he, like so many other people in the past, has assumed that Armin is someone who might be interested in boys . . . and Marco has now as good as admitted he’s that type himself, talking about Jean . . . Jean?

He shouldn’t be so shocked, but the revelation sends him reeling. Or perhaps it’s the revelation of his own stupidity that’s throwing him for such a loop. Of course Marco has decided that he must like boys. Anyone looking at him would. It’s this damn hair, this damn long hair—he should cut it. But no, then he would look even more like a child. He’s either womanly or childlike, there’s no possible way for him to appear properly masculine. Well, it’s not fair that everyone always makes these assumptions about _him_, of all people! Derek had very broad shoulders and was starting to sprout a stringy beard, and here’s Marco . . . Walls! Marco is the darling boy all the girls giggle about, with his soft black hair and his charming smile. And here he is mooning over Jean, whose aggressive appearance is also distinctly masculine. Just because Armin doesn’t have time to chase after girls or even think about them really doesn’t mean . . . doesn’t mean . . .

“I think Jean is pretty ugly, actually,” Armin finds himself declaring as he quickly scratches in the last valve connection on his 3DM sheet. “And Mikasa’s never going to look twice at him, so he’s embarrassing himself by staring at her like that.”

He busies himself rolling up his paper so he doesn’t have to look at Marco’s face, but he can hear the hurt in his voice and cringes. “Y-yeah, you’re right, he shouldn’t do that. It’s pretty rude of him.”

Armin’s heart sinks into his stomach. He shouldn’t take his anger out on Marco. After all, Marco thought he’d known this taboo about Armin and had actually tried to warn him. _He’s too soft for his own good_.

_And he’s still a snooper._

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Armin offers, trying to repair a little bit of the damage he might have done. “To practice repairing the actual gear.”

Marco smiles up at him, a little too brightly. He’s still upset. He must care about Jean a lot, Walls help him. “Yeah, same time, same place?”

“Of course,” Armin calls over his shoulder, already practically out the door. He surely looks absurd running away from Marco, but it’s suddenly stifling to be trapped inside at all, much less in this little room with its propaganda-laden shelves and Marco’s prying eyes.

Striding across the empty training yard outside, Armin breathes in deeply. There’s something about being in the open air that both loosens the perpetual knot between his shoulders and fills him with this longing ache. Out of habit, he slows his steps and tilts his head back, drinking the stars that are glittering brightly on this clear autumn evening. If he cranes his neck, Wall Rose disappears from the edge of his vision and he can pretend there’s nothing holding him in, that he’s out in the world, on his way to climb a fire-mountain or swim in the vast “oceans” of saltwater.

“I’m a real heretic,” he whispers to himself, a thrilling confession. “I’m not a pervert.”

Even as he says it, he winces. When he thinks more about it, it doesn’t seem so objectively weird to like someone of the same sex. Sure, you wouldn’t be able to procreate, but what’s so special about procreating? His parents disappeared when he was young, and his grandfather was sent to his death outside the Walls to ease the demand for food after the fall of Wall Maria. And he was far from the only orphan stranded here, depending on the military. Walls, before he reached his majority on his twelfth birthday last fall, he had been supporting himself for years as an itinerant farmer. He mourned his grandfather sorely and at one point had vowed vengeance on the powers within the Walls for throwing him away like trash, but he is also a little proud that he hadn’t needed adults to make his way in the world. And he definitely doesn’t want to be an adult to another child. Once you had a child, you had to sacrifice everything for them and hope they carried on your legacy. Armin can’t have someone realize his dreams for him—besides the fact that he wants to see things through for himself, it would hardly be fair to pressure his offspring into taking on his hopes and fears for the future.

And if you didn’t care about procreating, why should it matter who you chose as a partner? Maybe sex was easier if you did it with someone whose anatomy you actually understood. Though he is curious about sex in a detached, abstract sense, Armin doesn’t want a partner at all for the same reasons he’s not interested in having a child; however, he supposed he could muster some sympathy for Derek and Marco and their attractions. After all, who was he to judge?

No, what bothers him much more is being judged himself. Not because he actually thinks there’s anything so awful about liking your own gender or being a woman (Mikasa is the most impressive person he knows, after all), but because it’s another way he’s signaled out as “lesser.” Another way he’s “weird.” And this one he doesn’t control or choose; it all has to do with how he’s perceived. If the military continues conflating heresy and “queerness,” he might get thrown out without anyone actually discovering his actual violations. He’s worked too hard to stay here for that.

Because there is only one way to even catch a glimpse of that beautiful outside world he’s read about in his heretical text—make it through basic training and enlist in the Survey Corps. Two more years of training and he’ll be there . . . but he has to last that long first.

He squares his shoulders and continues on his way to the barracks. His heart feels heavy when Wall Rose appears on the horizon again, an ominous dark shadow against the inky blue sky. Someday, he’ll be able to go back to his old home in Shiganshina, to uncover the secrets Grisha Yeager had left behind for his son Eren. And if he wants to get to that someday, maybe he ought to find ways to seem more manly.

_I’ll talk to Eren about tomorrow . . . no, Reiner maybe. He won’t laugh at me or send me away; he enjoys brothering the others. And I’ll try to be a little colder with Marco . . . and probably I should move Grandfather’s book, just in case. But when? And where?_

Settled into his bunk later that night, surrounded by the grunting snores of the other boys, he gingerly pokes at his mattress. He can’t feel the book anywhere, which means it must be well hidden still. If someone had it, he would know by now.

Probably.

Unsettled by uncertainty, Armin drifts to sleep, dreaming of Derek being dragged away from the barracks by Reiner, screaming for help while Armin laughs nervously along with the others.

* * *

The next morning, Eren pulls him aside as they cross the training grounds on their way to breakfast, thick eyebrows drawn into an intense frown.

“You heard about Derek?” he asks in a whisper, no preamble. Armin nods numbly. It’s comforting that Eren is checking in on him, but also the memory of his conversation with Marco last night still stings a bit. Suddenly he feels incredibly _watched_, even though he’s equally certain most people don’t look twice at him. Did everyone know about what was under Derek’s pillow?

“Yeah, Marco told me what they found. I’ll try my best to deflect suspicion.”

“Good.” Eren gives his arm a brief squeeze before letting go. Armin supposes that physical affection with another boy is not exactly deflecting suspicion, but surely by now people know about him and Eren . . . or does their status as best friends make that suspicion worse? Unbidden, a vision of him kissing Eren pops into his mind. It’s not unpleasant in any objective sense, but it is a little uncomfortable. That’s just not something he should do with Eren, he feels it in his gut. It relieves him that his mind tries to push that image away; it must mean that there’s really nothing to the idea that he’s interested in boys because he’s less masculine in appearance, that he’s not weird in _that _way at least.

“Maybe you should move your book later,” Eren hisses in his ear, glancing around in a most obvious manner. “Just in case.”

Armin realizes that Eren thinks Derek was kicked out because he was actually a heretic. Guilt twists in his gut at the thought of keeping a secret from his closest confidant, he decides it’s easier to keep letting Eren think this way. He suddenly finds he doesn’t want to know what Eren might feel about same-sex attraction. Their friendship is too important to risk over something like that. Because even though Armin has decided he doesn’t care about having a partner at all, he just can’t bear that Eren might feel some kind of taint in associating with him. Sure, when they were kids, Eren would try to beat anyone up for looking sideways at Armin, but somehow the stakes felt bigger now. Eren definitely doesn’t want to risk his dream of joining the Survey Corps either.

So, Armin better not become a liability.

“Yeah, I was thinking I should, um, rearrange some things soon,” Armin concedes, his voice drifting off as they enter the mess hall and step into line for their breakfast. Cold porridge. Again. Appropriately filling and served in heftier portions than he got when he was traveling from farm to farm. He tries not to let himself feel too grateful to the military by reminding himself that they sent his grandfather to die outside Wall Maria so that he could have this gruel. It sours his appreciation pretty quickly.

Mikasa joins them at the table, sliding into the spot beside Eren with quiet determination. She brushes her shining black hair away out of her clear eyes, revealing her perpetually stoic expression. Armin offers her a greeting smile, noticing that she doesn’t notice how many heads turn to watch her pass. Between Eren’s loud vitriol against titans and Mikasa’s excessive beauty and skill, Armin slips by largely unremarked. He tries to think that they’re helping hide in plain sight, but there’s always this gnawing dread that he rides their coattails—stunted, useless Armin. Worse yet, whenever he does attract attention, it’s usually some bully wanting to beat him up for his bookish nature or his girly appearance, and his friends have to come save him.

_I already am a liability. _

When Mikasa sits down, Eren grumbles about overcrowding and scoots away. Behind him, Armin hears a snort. He doesn’t need to turn around to know who made the noise and braces himself to duck out from the middle of a confrontation.

“What is it, _Jean_?” Eren snarls from their table, stabbing his spoon into the porridge so hard that a little bit glops onto Armin’s nose.

_Can’t I just have one meal in peace? One meal? _

“Fuck you, Yea--”

“Enough!” booms Reiner, appearing beside Armin to tower between the two tables. How does a thirteen-year old get to be that broad? Armin wonders, gazing up at him with awe. Or why did he get blessed with that square of a jaw . . . if only Armin could have something like that, just one little manly facial feature to set him apart . . .

“If you really want to fight, you can take it out on each other in the practice yard, we have hand-to-hand later today.”

Eren huffs, then leans toward Armin conspiratorially. “I really don’t get why they make us practice hand-to-hand so much, it’s not like we can use it to kill Titans—”

“Oh, shut up and eat your food,” Jean grumbles in a carrying voice. “Maybe if you ask nicely, one of your lackies will spoon-feed it to you.”

Armin whips round to glower at Jean himself. _I’m nobody’s lackey!_ But someone beats him to the chase.

“Aw, you’d like to be spoon-fed yourself, wouldn’t you, Jeanie-boy?” the dark-haired Ymir crows from beside him. Jean makes a rude gesture, his face full of thunder. He apparently doesn’t understand that Ymir lives to bait others, doesn’t see the victorious flash in her eyes. Or, Armin reconsiders, more likely he can’t help himself.

But he’s saved from further teasing by the bell tolling across the yard, signaling that it’s time to gear up for lessons. Well-trained now, the cadets rise as one and take their bowls to the washroom in relatively efficient silence. They’ve learned that no matter how hungry or tired they are, they do not want to be late to the practice yard. Only the squirrely Sasha pushes her luck, offering to take others’ bowls to the kitchens so she can sneak a few extra morsels of breakfast. Mikasa always saves her bowl especially for her.

Watching Mikasa quietly hand the dregs of her porridge to a glowing Sasha brings a question to Armin’s mind. Does Mikasa have friends besides him and Eren? Armin doesn’t. Not even Marco is his friend, although they spend a lot of time together and often pair up in lessons. He wonders if she ever feels it too, that barrier between herself and others, a barrier made by their experiences in Shiganshina and the lives they lost. Almost no one in the 104th Cadet Corps has made it here without suffering, but there’s something about the fact the Mikasa, Eren, and Armin had suffered together that continues to bind them.

Well, Eren and Armin also dream together about going outside the Walls. While Eren often mouths off to the other cadets about the necessity of joining the Survey Corps and killing all the man-eating titans, they could never tell another soul about the book hiding in Armin’s bed, the one volume more wonderous than any collection of books you could find within the Walls, Armin is sure. A shared secret is a shared bond . . . though wouldn’t that logic bind him and Marco together, since he knows Marco’s secret now? And Marco thinks he knows Armin’s . . .

But he’s wrong.

Lining up for hand-to-hand practice, Armin finds himself watching Jean. What is it about this grumpy, argumentative boy that draws someone as nice and people-pleasing as Marco to him? He knows from listening to the other recruits that several of them have this weird idea that opposites attract each other. He can’t fathom that kind of connection, but maybe it would work for Marco. But, surely, you’d want to be with someone with whom you could share most of yourself, and what did Jean and Marco share? Marco is as diffident as Jean is defiant, there isn’t much of a match there. More likely Marco has some kind of savoir complex and genuinely finds Jean handsome. Armin eyes Jean’s long frowning face, his dusty blond hair, his narrowed hawkish eyes, and the long, awkward limbs he somehow manages well enough to be one of the best in their corps at 3DM maneuvering.

No, he doesn’t get it.

Commander Shadis appears, bald head blinding in the mid-morning sun. He pairs off the students and sets them to their routines. Perhaps he’s feeling particularly sadistic today because he partners Eren with Jean, ignoring their scowls and the crackling energy between them. Armin doesn’t have time to worry too much about his friend though, as he’s paired with Bertolt. The other boy is shy and quietly focused, but he’s also almost twice again Armin’s height.

_How did he even get enough food to grow that tall?_ Armin grumbles to himself as he’s thrown on his butt for the third time that morning. He’s going to be black and blue all over his back if this keeps up.

“Sorry,” Bertolt mumbles, offering him a hand.

Armin takes it gratefully, wincing as he straightens up. “It’s your job. I suppose it’s good practice for if I ever have to wrestle a titan.”

Bertolt blanches, jumping when a laugh booms out from behind him. Reiner is carrying a protesting Connie on his shoulder and pauses to wink at Armin before throwing him down in the dust. “Good one, Armin!”

Good one? For some reason people always think he’s being funny when he doesn’t mean to. Besides being a poor excuse for a joke, Armin had genuinely considered that perhaps Shadis had paired him up with the comparatively colossal Bertolt to give a weakling like him a glimpse of what it would be like to go up against a titan without any gear. The smallest titans were at least twice Bertolt’s height. He gulps at that daunting prospect. _Well, that’s why we have gear._

Maybe he overthinks it, but Shadis always seems to set him tasks that stretch his physical ability to his limits, like he’s trying to weed Armin out from the others. But Armin holds on, scraping a pass in every test. Maybe Shadis would eventually tire of him and drum up a heresy charge just to get him out of his hair.

“Spineless coward!” Eren’s snarl pulls him back from his sullen thoughts. Alarmed, Armin wheels to find him and Jean clutching each other’s shirts, noses inches from each other. “Don’t you see that if we don’t fight the titans at all, we’re all going to die anyway!”

“No, _you’re_ the fucking coward.” Jean’s lips curl up in a sneer. “Running to your death like that.”

“It’s not running to death,” Eren answers through gritted teeth. “It’s fucking standing up for something. Do you really enjoy waiting for _your_ death in this pen, like a sheep?”

Eren’s scowl deepens when Jean barks out a laugh. “Oh, fine words. Gather ‘round everyone, another great speech from Humanity’s hero, Eren Yeager! Yes, let’s hear more about how we’re all pathetic livestock, how we could solve all our problems with a suicide charge!” He yanks himself out of Eren’s hold and spits on the ground. “Your friends in Wall Sina thank you for your noble ‘sacrifice.’ More food for them now.”

Eren’s nostrils flare, but he closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath. The air is heavy with expectation as the rest of the trainees watch the confrontation play out. Armin’s chest feels tight and his pulse pounds with anticipation.

“So, we should all just go join them? Fatten ourselves up for the slaughter? Why don’t you even want to try to make a better world?”

Jean snorts. “You think splattering your blood on Wall Maria will make a better world?”

“It’s titan blood that will be splattered! If you weren’t such a coward bent on dying in your little hidey-hole, you could help me make a difference!”

“Yes, dipshit, I’m afraid,” Jean admits, taking a step towards Eren. “Any sensible person would be. Fuck, you obviously are! I’ve seen you shaking when you talk about titans. But you’re more afraid of living your life within the Walls for some reason, and you’d rather kill yourself than face it. Which is fine, there’s a lot of shit in the Walls, but just fucking admit you’re scared like the rest of us. Stop looking down on us when you’re no braver than anyone else here! And stop calling us sheep when you’re always bleating on about the heroic Survey Corps.”

Armin can see that Eren is indeed shaking now, but with rage . . . probably? Jean is right, Eren is afraid of the titans, he has admitted that to Armin before, but his anger always seems to brace him up in the end. If his anger is stronger, it shouldn’t matter if he’s afraid.

Right?

“That’s some kind of twisted logic,” Eren growls. “If you despise them so much, why do you want to go Wall Sina? And why would you want to join the MP? And if the Survey Corps has even a sliver of hope of winning us back our land, shouldn’t we take it? Hell, if we gathered our military at full strength, wouldn’t we actually stand a chance at retaking the whole world back for Humanity?”

A pleading note enters his voice. It’s soft and subtle, only the faintest hint of uncertainty, but Armin catches it. Unfortunately, so does Jean. He goes in for the kill.

“Because it’s only the threat of horrible monsters that makes Humanity behave so badly,” he scoffs. “Actually think things through for two seconds, idiot. There’s already so few of us here, and we’re starving. We don’t stand a chance in hell against the titans, but even if by some fucking miracle we actually managed to kill them all, do you really think we’d change? We’re pretty shit at sharing. We’re so shit at sharing our dear leaders threw—what? Thirty-percent?—of us out to the wolves. Not so that we didn’t starve, mind you. We’re still starving alright. But so their rich asses wouldn’t have to stop eating meat. We’re all already dead, Eren, just some of us want to live a bit before we’re eaten up by something or other.”

Armin’s heart is pounding in his chest with an odd elixir of feelings—worry for Eren, but also frustration and anger . . . with the military. Jean’s words strike him, shake him to his core because, actually, he kind of agrees with him. Not with his defeatist conclusion, no, but with his assessment of the world. From a certain angle, he can suddenly see the logic of trying to stick it to a system that would treat you like an expendable tool.

And also, for some reason, when Jean speaks with conviction like that, there is something about his face that is . . . interesting. Not handsome, exactly, but interesting. Is that what Marco meant?

“You have no imagination,” Eren snaps, raising his fist.

“Enough!” Commander Shadis thunders, striding towards them from the opposite end of the training yard. “Kirstein! Yeager! Run thirty laps around the perimeter of the entire camp! And you’re both moved to latrine duty for the next month.”

Armin winces at the fury in his voice. Had he overheard what Jean and Eren were saying to each other? If so, he doesn’t mention it. But then maybe they’ll suddenly find that Jean has heretical material under his bed, and they’ll whisk him away in the middle of the night.

_Or maybe they’ll finally decide they’ve had enough of Eren and send _him _away. Then what will become of me?_

As he watches them jostle each other before starting to jog, Armin’s eyes slide to Marco, who’s staring after Jean, chewing his lip.

* * *

Dinner that evening is a quiet affair, mostly because Eren and Jean are too tired to even contemplate continuing their argument. They sit in opposite corners of the mess hall, barely managing to sneak glares at each other from across the room. Armin is grateful, but he still gulps down his food quickly, eager to get back to the dorm.

“I’m gonna rearrange things tonight,” he answers to Mikasa’s raised eyebrow. Eren nods wearily. He understands. “And then I’m going to study a bit with Marco,” he adds. “If . . . if you want to come along?”

He hates that he’s a little relieved when both Eren and Mikasa shake their heads. It’s not that he doesn’t like to spend time with them; rather, he’d like some time in his own head for a bit. Though maybe Marco is no longer a person who will be able to give him that sense of space, considering what he’d shared with Armin yesterday.

He ducks out of the mess hall as quietly as he can, trying to keep himself from jogging across the yard. That would look suspicious, if anyone was watching. And he always feels like someone is watching. What a strange world he lives in, to simultaneously feel always watched but never noticed.

As he’d hoped, the dorm is empty when he enters, lit only by the sliver of sun about to disappear behind Wall Rose. Crouching by his bunk, he reaches his hand underneath the mattress and feels around for the hole he knows is there. He buries his hand in the straw and paws blindly until his fingers touch the leather of the spine. He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Still there. But now where to move it?

Glancing around to make sure he’s really completely alone, he gently tugs the small volume out and lets it fall open in his hands. It lands on a page with a colored picture of an endless expanse of sand. A desert. How could such a wonder exist within their world? Would he ever be able to see such a thing himself? Sometimes he doubts; when he falls in the mud during endurance training, when he gets tangled up in web of his own 3DM gear, when Bertolt throws him on the ground over and over again. Sometimes Eren, worried for him, asks if he wouldn’t rather join the engineers. And sometimes, hurt by Eren’s worry, Armin considers it. But engineers would never be taken onto the front lines or beyond the Walls, and that’s where he most wanted to go.

He flips through more pages, trying to let their marvelous pictures instill courage in him. Still, tonight it strikes him that all the landscapes contained within are startling empty. It’s crossed his mind that perhaps there is another walled city somewhere, or another encampment of humans that haven’t yet been eaten by the ever-increasing hordes of titans. If the world is really as vast as his book implies, they surely can’t be alone . . . and what would those other humans be like? Would meeting them again be like reuniting with a long-lost family, or would something else happen?

_Because it’s only the threat of horrible monsters that makes Humanity behave so badly._

Jean’s sarcastic words from this afternoon drift back to him just as he hears footsteps coming up the gravel path to the barracks. He snaps the book shut and hastily stuffs it back inside his mattress, sitting down on his bed and trying to look like had he hadn’t just been reading heretical material.

The door creaks open and Jean himself steps into the room, grimy with the dust from the training yard still. “Oh, it’s you,” he grunts, limping past Armin to a closet along the back wall of their dorm. “Don’t worry you, can go back to . . . er, whatever you were doing in a minute. Just need to get the cleaning supplies.”

Armin can’t find his voice, so he just nods stiffly. He hasn’t ever really talked to Jean on his own before, he realizes. Usually he and Eren are too busy snapping at each other’s throats for the opportunity to arise.

Jean swears as he rummages around in the closet, seemingly indifferent to Armin’s presence. Once again Armin has to grudgingly admit there’s an advantage to being beneath real notice. It doesn’t seem like Jean is going to question what he’s doing in here by himself. Still, the close call sends Armin’s blood pounding in his hears.

He’s so tense he almost jumps when Jean speaks again. “I’ve always wondered, are you as eager to die as your friend there?”

Armin blinks, then sours. “Why?” he asks, unable to keep a sullen edge from his voice. “You think I’m not tough enough to make it?” The words slip out before he can stop himself; it’s been a long, stressful day. He braces himself for teasing.

“I think any one of us would die if we went out there,” Jean replies matter-of-factly, reappearing in Armin’s line of sight with a mop over his shoulder and bucket under his arms. He looks down his long, beaky nose at Armin, but there’s no scorn in his eyes like when he speaks to Eren. Just assessment. “Well, maybe Mikasa could take a few titans out with her, but otherwise Wall Maria is pretty much a death trap for anyone. So, what about it? You want to free Humanity from its terrible prison with your own two swords?”

It’s a challenge, and suddenly remembering that Jean called him Eren’s lackey this morning, Armin he wants to rise to it. “I . . . I think that maybe there’s something outside the walls that someone in here doesn’t want us to see. And it’s worth trying to figure out what it is.”

As soon as the words come out his mouth, he regrets them. Obviously, he’s verging on the heretical. Eren ranting about needing their land back is one thing but implying that there’s some kind of secret about the outside world that needs to be explored . . . well, that’s an entirely different matter. What’s he trying to prove to Jean by taking this huge risk?

Jean’s mouth twitches slightly as he continues to consider Armin. In the half-light of the room, there really is something about the alignment of the sharp angles of his face, a seriousness about his gaze that draws Armin in somehow.

Then he shrugs. “Well, good luck figuring that out.” There’s no heat in his words. If it wasn’t for that little smirk, he might be completely serious. He stalks back to the barracks door, grumbling about latrine duty.

_I just gave away my secret. _And yet, somehow, Armin knows that Jean won’t tell anyone else what he just admitted, the heresy he just revealed.

Jean pauses in the doorway, calling over his shoulder, “Marco is looking for you, by the way.”

And then he’s gone, and Armin is properly alone once more. The phrase “I’ve always wondered” sticks with him though. Maybe he’s more noticeable than he thinks.

* * *

Later that night, Armin lays awake on his pallet, the corner of his book digging into his back. Its new position in the mattress is more obvious than it originally had been, he’ll have to adjust that tomorrow before inspection. But it’s also kind of comforting to be reminded that it really is still there, that no one had uncovered his secret.

No one besides Jean that is, and Armin had given it to him freely.

In coming to terms with what happened in the barracks this evening, Armin has decided that he probably trusted Jean with a tiny bit of his heresy because Jean is too wrapped up in his quest to join the MP to really care about what a nobody like Armin is doing. He’s not a potential rival like Eren, and he feels pretty confident that Jean isn’t vindictive enough to use his potential heresy against Eren. And however much Jean may despise Armin’s best friend, he’s too invested in his self-proclaimed honesty to fight dirty.

_He may be trying to game the system to win a spot as an MP, but he’s playing by the rules. I guess that’s something for you, Marco. _

Marco had been more subdued that evening. He’d focused primarily on maintaining their gear, never once mentioning Jean despite the afternoon’s drama. A wall had gone up between them, and Armin was of two minds about it. A large part of him was relieved, but he couldn’t help feeling a little sad too, like he was missing an opportunity with Marco.

At least he had learned something about himself earlier, that he truly wasn’t interested in men any more than women, that Marco was wrong about him. His reaction to picturing himself with Eren had proved that. That was valuable information.

To test himself again (though whether out of hubris or self-doubt, he’s not sure), he summons an image of Jean and Marco kissing each other. If that’s what Marco wants, it’s the least he can do to try to understand him. He envisions them wrapped around each other as he once saw the corps’ lovebirds Franz and Hannah—Jean with his back to the dormitory wall, Marco’s leg pressed between his thighs, Jean’s long fingers on Marco’s face while he sighs into his mouth . . .

His stomach jumps. It’s . . . exciting actually.

_Well . . . shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Mirandafandomette for checking this for me. And thanks to twoboys-onesoul@tumblr.com for putting Jearmin Week together! And thanks to everyone who reads this! I appreciate it.
> 
> I stretched "forbidden relationship" a bit, and I leaned heavily on some world-building that's kinda loose in canon. I always wanted Isayama to develop the idea of "heresy" a bit more, so here's my take on it :)


	2. Wall Sina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was created for days 3/4 Jearmin Week 2019, Summer Nights and Roommates.

_Year 850, in Mitras, capital city and centermost point of the Walls_

“So . . .” Jean begins after an uncomfortable pause. “We’re alone.”

Armin can’t bring himself to look at Jean, so he focuses on the open window, the winking lights of the city outside. “Well,” he says in his most businesslike tone. “Who should get the bed by the window tonight? I think it would be fairest if we switched who got it night by night, since it’s so hot these days.”

“Oh, um, yeah . . . we can do that.” There’s another heavy pause, then a sigh and thunk as Jean drops his bag on the floor. “Okay. You don’t seem happy about having space to ourselves . . . you don’t have to be happy about it, I guess, but like . . . you asked to room together.”

Yes, this is true. But his hand was forced. Jean doesn’t know this though, and probably shouldn’t.

“And when . . . when we kissed, you said that you, um, wanted to be more than friends. Is that still something you want?”

Armin shifts his weight between his feet. Yes, they had indeed kissed in the kitchen of a cabin Squad Levi had used as a hideout during the Uprising, right after Armin had killed a woman to save Jean’s life and right before they’d stormed Reiss Chapel to free Eren and Historia. Back when Armin thought that he was probably going to die and there was nothing to lose.

But now they’re in the capital city with medals yoked tightly around their necks, guests of honor in Queen Historia’s household until her official coronation at the end of the week. They’re wearing starched dress uniforms and polished boots, both of which are prisons in the late summer heat. Suddenly, the stakes feel higher than they’ve ever been. They’re the queen’s personal friends and heroes of the Uprising, so maybe they have a little more protection than when they were nobody Scouts, but it also means they have farther to fall if they’re discovered.

Still, he can’t pretend it’s not exciting to share a room with Jean. The possibilities—when he briefly allows himself to consider them—are tempting. But it really would have been safer to room with someone else, so that no one would have any reason to suspect . . .

“Did you change your mind?”

He finally looks over to meet Jean’s eyes. It’s a bit unusual to see Jean so hesitant. He’s normally quick on the uptake, knowing exactly what to do in any given situation—until he doesn’t. The worst moments are when his moral compass keeps spinning and spinning, trying to find a perfect solution that doesn’t exist. And that’s usually where Armin steps in with a bigger strategy or with the conviction that somehow only seems to come out when they’re desperate.

_Well, I’m desperate now! I don’t know what to do! I didn’t plan this, I can’t control this . . ._

He clears his throat. “Er, no, I didn’t. I meant what I said, and the kiss, well, it was nice, definitely but . . . but this isn’t very discreet.”

Jean arches a thin eyebrow, hands on hips. Armin tries not to let his eyes linger on the angles of Jean’s body, the nice ratio of his shoulders to his hips. “Yes, you can hear almost everything through a solid stone wall.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Armin murmurs, lowering his voice anyway. “It’s not very discreet to, um, do something in the queen’s palace.”

It’s so damned hot in his uniform, making it even more difficult to think. The heat is obviously also getting to Jean because Armin can smell his sweat, even though they’re still a good three feet apart. His scent makes a different kind of heat pool in Armin’s stomach, and it’s very distracting. _And nothing is possible, not here, not right now._

“Okay, but we’re probably less interesting to watch now that we’re not wanted for treason,” Jean points out, crossing his arms over his chest. “Unless, dunno, there’s some creep out there in trees.”

“We’re friends of the queen, of course we’re interesting to watch!” Armin hisses, tugging on his collar, wishing it would loosen but also not too keen on unbuttoning anything at the moment because of the potential symbolism. “Do you think she doesn’t have enemies, people who would prefer the old nobles back in power? I’m sure they’d love to say her court is full of debauchery! And yeah, the walls are stone, but what about the door and the window?”

“Woah, ‘debauchery?’ Just what do you think--,” Jean cuts himself off, takes a deep breath. Armin feels a twinge of regret . . . maybe if they closed the window, just for a bit before it got too hot, maybe . . . but then Jean speaks again and interrupts his thoughts. “I wasn’t asking for ‘debauchery,’ I was just asking, what am I to you? We don’t have to anything, but you just don’t seem comfortable . . . so don’t force yourself. That won’t do either of us any favors. If that kiss . . . if it was just a one-off thing, just . . . just say it.”

He sounds pained, and it softens Armin. He knows he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want Jean, maybe more than Jean realized or wanted himself. He’d long been curious about sex, and particularly curious about sex with Jean, for all the idea of being naked in front of someone else made him nervous. After all, Jean would be naked in front of him too, and that was a very intriguing image, one he’d fantasized about for longer than it was probably wise to admit. He’s seen Jean naked in the baths since he was much younger, but that’s not the same as being able _feel_ Jean’s nakedness or taste it, and that definitely adds another dimension to the prospect.

But Armin’s desire for Jean goes beyond the physical, and honestly that sometimes scares him more than the idea that someone could discover his queerness. Thrown together over many missions, Jean and Armin have become a team. In the field, they worked well together strategically, and they also always came back for each other when there was trouble. And when they’d started seeking each other out in between missions, they would talk for hours, and what Jean said was always interesting. Marco had turned out to be correct on both counts—under his grouchy (but handsome) looks, Jean is compassionate, always paying attention and trying to do right by others. Weirdly, even when Jean is bluntly disagreeing with him, he is easier to talk to than the increasingly withdrawn Eren, and it worries Armin that he can feel so connected to someone in a relatively short amount of time.

But not enough to make himself stop this.

  
Shooting a cautious glance at the open window, Armin steps towards Jean, then tentatively reaches out to take his hand. Jean lets him do it, standing very still, unsure of himself again . . . or unsure of Armin, more likely.

“I-it wasn’t just a one-off thing.”

And then, to prove it, Armin leans up to kiss Jean on the mouth for the second time, moving his lips against Jean’s with what he hopes is conviction. It definitely feels good to be this close, even with the heat—Jean’s mouth is surprisingly soft, his scent headily overwhelming now, and it pops into Armin’s mind that it would be nice to lick that scent off Jean’s neck, taste the salt of his skin. But when his hand comes to Armin’s face, fingers stroking softly against his cheek, Armin remembers where they are and breaks it off, stepping away quickly.

Confusion and pain flash across Jean’s face. Walls, if he isn’t an open book. Armin feels guilty, but not guilty enough to go back to him. After all, the fact every feeling shows up on Jean’s face is part of the problem, really.

“I’d like a relationship with you,” Armin assures him, weighing his words with care. “But we’re not really alone here, people know we’re rooming together and if they start to suspect . . . they could talk.” He can’t quite bring himself to tell Jean that somebody has already noticed the closeness that’s sprung up between them since joining the Survey Corps a few months ago. Maybe he’ll sound paranoid.

_Maybe it would be easier to be nothing to each other. Then we could never be used against each other. And we have to focus on the titans, and getting back to Shiganshina . . ._

Jean plops down on the bed closest to the door and starts unlacing his boots. Strands of ashy hair slide across his face—they’re getting longer, Armin realizes. It’s been so long since either of them had a haircut. But on Jean, he likes the look of longer hair, the way it frames the bones of his face. When both his boots are off and his dress coat is splayed out on the coverlet, Jean seems to breathe a little easier . . . and look even more enticing. Not for the first time, Armin imagines undressing Jean himself—no. He shouldn’t go there right now, not even in his head.

“Look, Armin,” Jean begins, running a hand through his hair. “I repeat, we don’t have to do anything. I don’t get why you’re worried about ‘discretion,’ but I don’t have to. It means something to you. But like, what does it mean to you to have a relationship then? What is it that you want from me? From us?”

Armin bites his lip. “I don’t know yet,” he finally admits in a quiet voice, “I think . . . I want you. I do, but it’s complicated, there are so many other things I want . . .” _And so many ways being with you might get in the way of my plans, however much I care about you or am attracted to you._

Jean rolls up his sleeves and pant legs then lies back on the bed, limbs spread out out to defy the heat. Compared to staying in a barracks or sleeping on the floor in a cramped dingy attic, this clean room with only two beds is a luxury. Armin knows logically that this opportunity won’t really present itself again. Soldiers like them are so rarely alone.

“I want you too, Armin. I meant what I said that day,” Jean’s voice is a little hoarse, eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling. Armin shudders when he wonders where Jean is in his mind, what he’s really looking at. The people they’d murdered? The half-formed titan form of Rod Reiss bearing down on the walls of Trost? Or even further back, to the first massacre in Trost, all the lives they’d lost?

_“I’ve liked you for a long time. I’ve never met anyone else like you.”_

Armin watches as Jean’s gaze comes into focus again, landing on the bolo tie around his neck. “Fuck, they tied this shit tight!” he grumbles, fumbling to it get it untied and then dropping it unceremoniously on a small table by his bed. The small trinket makes a surprisingly loud clunk against the wood.

“I’ll think about it,” Armin says, turning away from Jean’s sprawled out body to start unbuttoning his own coat. “I’ll think about how we can have something, what that something could be. How we could manage.”

The bed frame squeaks, and Armin glances over his shoulder to find Jean undressing even further, tugging off everything until he gets to his underpants. He gulps when he sees Jean’s back muscles and sharp shoulder blades, briefly allowing himself to consider what it would be like to hold them, kiss them, scratch them. But then Jean’s body disappears under the coverlet.

“Okay, Armin, you think. Maybe I’ll think too.”

Armin turns away from Jean’s hunched form and goes to dim the glowing crystal lantern in center of the room. Already they’ve been installed in most of the palace quarters already, another luxury, but one born from painful memories Armin would rather not relive at the moment. He finishes undressing in the dark, carefully removing his medal and setting carefully it on top of his folded dress coat. He doesn’t undress as far as Jean, keeping his thin linen undershirt. Even with the darkness, even in separate beds, he’d feel too exposed. Fortunately, someone in this palace has made sure the coverlets on these beds are light and breathable, a huge improvement over those fancy uniforms. And Armin ended up with the window bed. Just as he settles into the soft mattress, a breeze blows through to cool his face.

“We’ll switch the beds tomorrow,” he promises in a murmur. Maybe Jean doesn’t hear him though because he doesn’t reply.

Armin closes his eyes and tries to sleep, but his heart is beating too fast. He feels dizzy. He swallows and concentrates on his breathing, attempting to forget he’s alone in the room with Jean, that it would only take a few steps to be in the same bed as him.

_Yes, I’m afraid of what could happen to me and my dreams if we’re caught. But most of all, you’re a liability to me because I don’t want to lose you._

* * *

The next day, Jean and Armin sit next to each other in a meeting about the future of the Survey Corps. Armin chose this chair without thinking and now he bitterly regrets it. They’re packed close enough that it takes most of Armin’s concentration _not_ to accidentally touch Jean, and there’s an intensity between them that makes every brush of a knee or an elbow spark fire under Armin’s skin. He feels his ears reddening and is certain that everyone around them must notice.

_Walls, we’re so obvious!_

Earlier that morning, Jean had startled him awake with a yell, and he’d scrambled over to the other boy’s bed to find him twisted up his sheets, shaking and gasping. Without thinking, Armin had offered to hold him, and Jean just nodded, teeth clenched against whatever horrors his mind had shown him. So, Armin climbed into bed behind him and wrapped his arms gently around Jean’s waist, face pressed into his back. His skin was clammy with cold sweat, but it didn’t repulse Armin. That was a weird thing about Jean; he could be objectively physically disgusting, caked with dirt and sweat and blood, but Armin always still felt drawn to him.

Besides, he knew the nightmares that troubled Jean’s sleep. He had them too.

Eventually, Jean’s breathing had slowed, and since it was barely dawn outside and their circumstances didn’t really call for “first watch” anymore, they’d both dozed off again.

The second time he woke up, Jean was rolling over in his arms, tapping him awake. “Hey, sorry,” he mumbled thickly. “I wish we could stay longer but there’s that fucking meeting at the nine, and the eighth bell was just now.”

“Right,” Armin slurred, blinking at Jean as his outline came into focus. “Um, you okay?”

Jean shrugged. “Define okay. But I’m more okay than I was, thanks.” He smiled to show that he meant it, then, cautiously, he raised his hand to brush Armin’s hair away from his face. The touch was soft and sweet, and there was something so safely surreal about being nestled in bed with Jean in the grey morning light that Armin leaned forward to kiss him. And then, in spite of the staleness of their breath and the fact that they had to get up soon, Armin deepened that kiss, his hand clutching at Jean’s shoulders and their bodies pressed close enough together that Jean had almost certainly felt his morning erection.

And Jean had responded, moaning when Armin’s tongue found its way into his mouth, fingers sliding under Armin’s shirt to graze his skin. It was that touch more than anything that had awoken Armin to the reality of what they were doing, and he’d abruptly pulled away, wiping away the saliva that dripped down his chin.

“W-we have to get ready to go. Orders.”

Jean stared at him dazedly, then shook his head to clear it. He got up and turned away from Armin to his messy pile of clothes on the floor. “Right. Duty calls.”

_Sharing a room is too hard, it’s too close. Obviously, I can’t control myself properly, and that’s not fair to Jean._

Well, it was Connie’s fault they were in this situation at all.

After dinner yesterday evening, Connie had pulled Armin aside, dragging him into a secluded little nook before Armin could protest.

“Armin,” he’d began in a strained voice, “This is very important. Could you please let me room with Eren? _Please_?”

“What? Oh . . . um . . .” He’d been putting off deciding who to room with, if he was honest. It was an odd decision to be asked to make, after years of sleeping in dormitories. Eren seemed like the most natural choice and he would probably expect it, but it had occurred to Armin that it might be nice to have a room alone with Jean. Nice, but daunting and potentially risky.

“I know you and Eren probably plan to room together, but . . . well, you know, uh . . . I snore! And you’ve seen how it bothers Jean! And Jean, he likes you better than me, or at least you annoy him less, so you’d really being doing me a solid if you’d room with him instead! Please?”

“Oh . . .” Armin hadn’t been quite sure how to respond to that, or what to make of Connie’s apparent eagerness that he share a room with Jean. “Um, if it’s alright with Eren and Jean, I don’t have any reason to object.”

And he hadn’t not really, though it had been a little bit difficult to explain to Eren.

“Um, you know how Connie snores? Well, he’s worried about making Jean upset if they’re crammed into the same room without any buffer. It bothers you less, right? Connie was wondering if he could room with you instead?”

“Oh, alright,” Eren had replied, eyes distant and lost somewhere Armin couldn’t follow. “If you don’t mind sharing with Jean.”

Armin tried to shrug nonchalantly. “We manage okay.”

“Brave man,” Eren mumbled, and then they’d lapsed into silence as they walked the rest of the way to the guest wing.

_What could I have said though? No, I don’t want to sleep in the same room as Jean because it’s too hard not to touch him? Or no, I _need_ to sleep with Eren myself, you go annoy Jean. I’m sure that wouldn’t have started any weird rumors. Shit, it’s hot in here. So why does Jean’s warmth feel good? That doesn’t make _any _sense!_

He tries to concentrate on Commander Zackley’s speech about the expanded duties of the Survey Corps, but Squad Levi have already been briefed by Hange and their captain, so there’s not much new to take his attention. Instead his eyes drift to Connie sitting next to Sasha in the row in front of him. Really, it wasn’t Connie himself who worried Armin, it was the idea that someone as unobservant as Connie had noticed Armin and Jean’s closeness.

_Though he was really intense about rooming with Eren. Was that really because he didn’t want to annoy Jean with his snoring? Was it even about Eren? Does he think he’s doing me or Jean some kind of favor? No . . . that’s too clever for Connie. But maybe someone put him up to it. _

He watches Sasha lean over to Connie and whisper something in his ear. Maybe . . . but no, if Sasha suspected that there was something between him and Jean and hadn’t minded that them being together was a perversion, she wouldn’t have been able to keep herself from teasing them. They would know.

But then who?

His gaze slides to Eren sitting on Connie’s other side, dark head turned listlessly to the window. Definitely not Eren. He’s been lethargic and spaced out since they returned from the crystal chapel. Armin bites his lip. It’s worrying to see him this way, completely robbed of his conviction. Sure, there had been times in the past when Armin had thought his friend went too far with his ranting about how all Humanity were livestock unless they fought the titans, but to see him so deflated . . . it scares Armin to think that Eren had begged Historia to kill him for the sake of Humanity, that he’d felt so utterly powerless and defeated. And now Eren is stuck in this state of waking sleep, drifting from one thing to the next without seeming to care anymore.

Armin bites his lip. Maybe there had been some truth to what Jean had said years ago, back when they were cadets still, that Eren was more afraid of something in the walls than what was outside of it, that there was something he’d rather die than face.

_No, considering how wrapped up in his own world he is, I don’t think he’s bothering with me and Jean. And I don’t want him to. He shouldn’t be bothering with anything at the moment, besides training his hardening powers._

Jean shifts in his seat, his thigh nudging against Armin’s. Even this light touch is enough to bring Armin jolting back to his present predicament. He decides then and there that he has to spend the rest of the day apart from Jean or he’s going to go completely insane.

* * *

By that evening, Armin is pretty proud of himself for how well he’s managed to put some distance between him and Jean. After the meeting he went straight to observing Eren while he practiced his titan skin-hardening technique, and then he went to the library to look at maps of Shiganshina, to refresh his memory before their mission there. It was weird seeing his old hometown rendered flat on paper, to try to match tiny ink marks with his memories of the buildings and alleyways. In some ways, Trost is more familiar to him, since he lived there as a refugee for some years and frequently returned when as a farmer and later a military trainee. And then of course there were all the battles he’d fought there . . .

Armin tries to feel something for Shiganshina, his home, but he is so detached from it at the moment. He remembers long days by the cannels dreaming about the outside world, often with Eren and Mikasa but also often alone, imagining himself and them climbing mountains. Mountains were a particularly nice fantasies, isolated from the bullies that they so often scrapped with in the streets of Shiganshina, the ones who spat at him and called him a heretic just for trying to tell them there was something more to this world beyond their Walls. He remembers Eren’s clashes with these kids too, how quickly he charged in to fight them. He’d been so passionate once, too passionate Armin used to think, so much so that he’d seemed to relish those brawls . . . but now he was broken, and Armin wasn’t sure how to fix him.

_Maybe that’s not your job_, a voice that sounds a bit like Jean’s says in his mind.

Armin snaps his atlas shut just as the fifth bell tolls, signaling dinner.

In the dining hall, Armin chooses to sit between Eren and Mikasa. Jean notices and frowns, but just takes a seat opposite him, next to Sasha. Throughout dinner, Armin tries to be very attentive to Eren, who barely swallows down some bread before saying he’s tired and going to his room. Mikasa stares after him with anxious eyes but decides not to follow. They eat the rest of their meal in uneasy silence—except for Sasha, who is thoroughly enjoying the increased quality and quantity of their food.

The situation with Eren is distracting enough that Armin doesn’t return to the problem of how he’s going to handle his second night alone with Jean until he, Connie and Jean are walking back down the hallway to their rooms. Connie bids them a cheerful goodnight outside his and Eren’s door, and then it’s just Armin and Jean again.

“Shall we?” Jean says with a bit or irony, holding the door open for Armin.

Once inside, Armin immediately makes for the bed by the door. “You get the window bed this time,” he reminds Jean, plopping down on the mattress to claim it, forcing a bright smile on the other boy. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going to that warm tonight, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

Jean crosses his arms and frowns down at him. “What if I don’t want the window bed?”

Armin’s smile falters a bit. “Er, well, then you can have this one again.”

“Thanks for giving me your permission,” Jean throws his hands up in the air.

It’s Armin’s turn to frown now. “Why are you annoyed with me? If you want this bed you can have it.”

“It’s not about the bed,” Jean snaps. “It’s about you managing everything without actually telling me what it is that you want!”

“I’ve said I’m thinking about it,” Armin counters. “And keep your voice down.”

Jean storms to the window and shutters it with some violence, then rounds on Armin. “Seriously, no one can hear us in here! We’re three floors up and the walls are as thick as well . . . the Walls.”

“But hopefully not filled with titans,” Armin quips.

He sees Jean’s lips twitch upwards, but then his scowl comes back with twice as much force. He points an admonishing finger at Armin. “Don’t deflect. This isn’t about the damn walls either, it’s about how you send me so many mixed signals that I can’t figure you out at all. You want space to think about things, but then you’re in my bed this morning, kissing me and fuck it, I know you wanted to do more, but then poof, you’re gone. And you ran away from me after the meeting this morning, like I became some kind of plague!”

“We were too obvious!” Armin cries out in frustration, then reigns in his voice and continues. “We can’t sit next to each other anymore. People will talk.”

“What the fuck? So, everyone who sits next to each other is secretly fucking around behind closed doors all the time? Zackley and Erwin, they’re fucking now too?”

Armin pulls a face at that disturbing image of the two commanders. Erwin is handsome and charming certainly, but even if Zackley wasn’t old and greying there is something about him that creeps Armin out.

“Walls,” Jean continues, taking a step closer, “_We’re_ not even fucking, and we don’t have to but like . . . what is this, Armin?” He drops into the window bed, the fight going out of his shoulders, his face crumpling from angry to tired. “I just need a plan, so I don’t feel so hurt every time you suddenly run away. Or I need you to keep your own boundaries if you want them. I can give you space, but you come to me and I want you, so I go along with it but . . . I can’t keep doing that, so Armin . . . please.”

He locks eyes with Armin, and suddenly Armin’s brain just shuts down. He’s exhausted by thinking; he just wants to feel. He stands up and crosses the distance between the two beds to sit beside Jean. Jean watches him warily but doesn’t move. And he doesn’t wince away when Armin places a small hand against his bony cheek. He just watches. It’s only when Armin leans in to kiss him that he turns his head, his hand grabbing Armin’s wrist to gently hold him back.

“Tell me in words, Armin,” he says hoarsely. “Or are you only good with them when you’re manipulating people?”

Armin jerks back as if burned, freeing his wrist from Jean’s loose grasp just as there’s a heavy rap on the door.

“Scout Arlert? Scout Kirstein?” a gruff voice calls from the other side. “Please open for a message from her majesty the queen.”

Startled, neither Armin nor Jean moves immediately. When the knock sounds again, Jean crosses to the door, pulling it open to reveal one of the palace couriers. “Um, yes? I’m Scout Kirstein.”

The courier presses her fist to her heart in a salute. “Her majesty requests your presence and Scout Arlert’s tomorrow morning at the tenth bell in her private office in the east wing. Will you be available?”

Armin suppresses an astonished laugh at the idea that anyone would ever dare be unavailable. Jean salutes the courier back, matching her formality, “Yes, we will. Thank you.”

The woman nods and strides back down the hallway, her boots clacking against the floor. Jean closes the door and wheels to face Armin, his eyebrows raised.

“See, I told you that door wasn’t soundproof,” is all Armin can think to say. Jean rolls his eyes and flops down on the bed by the door, still in his coat.

“Keep the fucking window bed. And turn out the light, it reminds me of that stupid cave!”

* * *

When they enter Historia’s office the next morning, they discover they are the only ones of Squad Levi who have been summoned. Their friend sits at beautifully carved desk with a stack of papers in front of her, scratching away at them with an ink pen. She’s as beautiful as ever, though her once free-flowing blond hair is pulled back into a sensible bun, and she as a military dress coat elegantly draped over her shoulders, despite the heat that’s already seeping in through the large glass windows. Technically, Historia is the Military Regent within the Walls, but Armin can’t help but see that coat as a decorative cage, reminding everyone that the real power here are the commanders who put her on the throne.

She smiles up at them from her desk and waves a dismissive hand at their salutes. “None of that, please. We have way too much history for that.” She stands up and comes around to hug them both with surprising strength. Well, her strength would only be surprisingly if you hadn’t grown up fighting her on the training court or seen her face down her horrifying titan father on the walls of Trost.

“What we can we do for you . . . er, your majesty?” Jean adds, clearly still unused to their shift in ranks.

“Historia,” she reminds him firmly, “Always Historia, even after I have my actual coronation. And I’d like to sit and have some tea with me while I pick your brains about something, if you don’t mind.”

Armin and Jean exchange glances. “Um, sure,” Armin says, settling into one of the cushy chairs opposite Historia while she pulls a tray from the shelf behind her and sets it on the desk between them. It has a painted ceramic tea pot and three matching cups, as well as a plate laden with what smells like freshly baked scones. Armin realizes he hasn’t had a scone since back when he lived in Shiganshina, and his throat suddenly feels tight. He clears it and continues, “Er, what can we help you with?”

He feels Jean watching him with concern but keeps his attention on the steaming teacup Historia hands him. If Historia notices any discomfort between them, she pretends not to, for which Armin is grateful.

“Basically,” she says once she’s finished divvying out the tea and placed a scone in front of each of them, “I’m writing a proposal to the commanders to let me start a royal orphanage on the lands of one of the old nobles. After doing a bit of research, I discovered that there are actually only three orphanages, and they’re all in the Underground which means they’re,” she purses her delicate lips as she searches for words, “not very invested in the children. They’re more like holding places where they can get food every once and a while.”

Armin and Jean nod; this is new information but nothing about it is surprising. Armin can’t remember seeing an orphanage anywhere in his lifetime. After the fall of Wall Maria and the death of his Grandfather, he’d just started working. He can’t imagine what his life would have been like if he’d been even younger when his whole world had been upheaved.

“Um, I’d like to help if I can,” Jean says, gingerly turning his hot cup of tea around in his hands. “And I’d get why you want Armin because he’s good at persuading people about things, but I’m not sure what you asked me here for, to be honest. Not that I don’t want to help,” he repeats. “Really.”

Historia smiles and takes a sip of her own tea. “Well, the reason there aren’t orphanages above ground is because most orphans join the military when they reach majority. And I was thinking that you would understand why that bothered me so much, Jean. And that the both of you,” she looks between them now, her blue eyes steely, “would be most helpful in anticipating the kinds of arguments we might be facing.”

Jean is blushing a little, looking pleased to have been singled out. Armin feels a strange jealousy twisting his stomach, even though he also very much wants to help Historia in her endeavor. He shakes those thoughts away, and asks, “Have you talked to anyone in command about this plan yet?”

Historia grins wolfishly; it’s an expression he’s still having trouble reconciling with the self-martyring goddess persona she put on in their cadet days. “Not anyone in command, no. But I’ve spoken with Captain Levi, and he’s in. He said, ‘The Underground is a shithole, children need fresh air.’ And if he’s in, I think we have a pretty good chance of convincing Commander Erwin.”

Armin and Jean exchange a glance. Now there’s an interesting alliance. Just a few months ago, Levi was threatening and cajoling a reluctant Historia into taking up the mantle of queen. But it makes sense that they would find themselves in agreement on this issue; they all knew now that the captain had grown up in the slums, raised by his serial killer uncle until he could manage himself. He’d given up his own criminal enterprise since meeting Erwin several years before the fall of Wall Maria, and for all his hard edges he seemed particularly invested in making sure Humanity’s forgotten received their due.

“So, I was thinking that I should start by requesting the lands of Lords Brackwell, Terrance, and Cyrus,” she continues, looking a sheaf of notes in front of her. “They’re in the south so I think they’d be nicer environments for the children, although I suppose more prone to a titan attack. There are farms attached to those properties as well, so we could grow our own food for the children. I’d also need a team of people to begin finding orphans, which could be a long process. What kinds of issues do you think I’ll run into, what do I need to anticipate?”

“I think the biggest thing,” Jean says, “Is that you might have a hard time convincing them that it’s not the best idea ever to send orphans into the military. Now that we’re united in fighting the titans, they might be thinking they need every person possible.”

Historia considers. “Well, the military can’t take people until their majority. So, they have to let me have some orphanages for children under the age of twelve at least, though I’d like to be able to keep them longer.”

“Um, have you though about raising the age of majority?” Jean suggests.

“I have, but I don’t know to what age we could raise it. I thought about fifteen, since that’s around when we usually graduate from the training corps, but then some farms and businesses might complain they’re short on workhands.”

Armin tries to imagine not working until he was fifteen. It’s hard to fathom. He’s almost sixteen now; what would he have done with his life he hadn’t had to work, if he’d lived in an orphanage his whole life after the Fall?

“Er, yeah, maybe one battle at a time.” Jean leans back in his chair, frowning to himself.

Armin takes a bite of his scone as he mulls over Jean’s proposal. It’s warm and fluffy, with bits of dried fruit inside. _I definitely should not get used to this. _And then he wonders why not? Yes, in an immediate sense he should not get used to eating better because he’ll be back to military rations relatively soon, but why can’t they dream of better lives for everyone? Why should it be so hard to imagine that they could eat better, have longer childhoods to grow and explore? Humans would have to keep living once they pushed back the titan threat, so why not try to imagine that life, as Jean and Historia are trying to do now?

“Actually, I think maybe you could do it, but you need more information,” he muses, “Like, this would take a lot of time and effort, but maybe you could make a list of all the people within the Walls? And you could have basic information like, their birthday, their age, their parents. That way you could tell if you had enough people to keep everything functioning, even if you raised the age of majority or made it so people under that age couldn’t work.”

Historia scribbles on a note to herself. “That’s an idea. Though you’re right that would take a lot of work . . . and wouldn’t having all the information be potentially dangerous?”

Armin nods. “In the wrong hands, yeah.”

“And, no offense, Historia, but I think we’ve all learned firsthand we can’t blindly trust authority,” Jean adds.

“None taken,” she replies cheerfully. “I see the risks, but I wonder if maybe it’s worth it?”

“Maybe we could put some checks on the power, like only certain information about people could be collected, and they could refuse to participate,” Armin suggests. “Or you could provide incentives for participating.”

Historia writes this down too. “I’ll take these ideas to the captain. He lived with the poorest of the poor for a very long time, I think he’ll know how they would respond.”

“And he’ll definitely tell you if he thinks it’s a shitty idea,” Jean says, half-laughing, half-wincing. Historia merely smirks.

“So that’s a potential long-term project, but I’d really like to get started on at least one orphanage immediately, before command gets distracted . . .”

_And while they’re still invested in making you a loveable inspiring queen_, Armin thinks, just as Jean says, “Well, they want people to love you, so maybe you can sell them on the plan that way.” He shoots Jean a surprised smile, even though the other boy can’t hear his thoughts. Sometimes it was nice to know they were on the same page.

“I actually think the hardest part of the orphanage project will be convincing the military that they don’t need those lands themselves,” Armin says, “Maybe we should look at the maps and terrain notes and see if there’s something wrong with them so we can argue that they’d make for bad training grounds, or something.” He shoots Jean a side-long look. “And if we can’t find anything we could lie?”

Jean pulls a face but doesn’t outright object, despite his preference for honesty. “Or exaggerate the truth,” he concedes.

Historia nods and makes another note. “I’d prefer not to, but if I must . . . Armin, I’m sorry to ask this while you’re on a break between missions, but would you be willing to check maps for me to see if there’s any possible problems with these three estates?” She hands him a slip of paper with the names and he nods.

“Yeah, I can do that.” After all, he’s already made himself familiar with the atlas section.

She beams at him and he suddenly remembers why everyone in their cadet corps was in love with her when they were younger. _She’ll definitely make a compelling figurehead queen . . . if the military can control her. _

“Thank you, Armin. And Jean, could you help me research the official age of majority? I want to know when it became a law and if there were any official arguments made about why it should be twelve and not something else. There should be legal records in the palace library.”

“Of course!”

“Good! Thank you. I’m glad I can count on your help!”

After receiving their projects, they take their leave of Historia, since she has another meeting with the commanders she must attend. But she hugs them again and stuffs the remaining scones into their pockets.

Outside, Jean and Armin walk in silence to a little garden cloister, both apparently lost in their thoughts. It’s Jean who breaks that silence first.

“You know, I think the higher ups are going to have their hands full with her actually,” he chuckles. “It gives me hope.”

“I was thinking that too,” Armin smiles over at him. “If she does enough for the people, they might love her more than their leaders, and that’s a kind of power, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Jean sighs. Then he glances over his shoulder. Armin follows his lead and looks around—they appear to be alone. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing, staying with the military?”

Armin sits down on the edge of the cloisters, chewing his lip. “It’s like the idea of counting all the people,” he says finally. “It has problems, but it’s the only tool we have right now.”

“That makes sense. But Historia, she wants to start making new tools.”

Above them, the bell tolls. Armin jumps up. “It’s time for Eren’s training, I have to go.”

“But what about Historia’s project?” Jean asks. “Can you skip today? We could go to the library together.”

Armin shakes his head. “I’ll do that later. I need to go to support Eren.”

“Oh, okay.” Jean’s expression shutters. “I’ll see you around, then.”

As Armin jogs off to the training yards, trying to push Jean’s unhappy face to the back of his mind.

* * *

Jean isn’t in the library when Armin shows up several hours later, however. He tries not let that bother him as he settles in with the atlases and a quire of papers for taking notes.

The hours slip by and Jean never appears.

Armin misses dinner to keep researching in the palace library. More accurately, he hears the bell and decides he doesn’t feel like going. He likes the quiet of the library, it’s a good place to think without interruption or distraction, and he’s had a lot to think about. Historia’s project, his worries about Eren . . . but what takes up most of his mind the rest of that day is Jean, and what he’d asked from Armin the night before. He eats the now cold scones from this morning and mulls it over, trying to figure out exactly what it is he wants from Jean.

He rips a page of his quire and jots down some ideas, then realizes writing about his feelings for another man on a piece of paper is ridiculously risky. He tears up the notes and looks around for a candle to feed them too, then realizes all the lamps in the room are the new crystal contraptions. So, he rips them into even smaller shreds and tucks them into his pocket. He’ll find a candle somewhere later or go down to the kitchens and use their fires.

An hour later the librarian on duty kicks him out to close the library. He supposes he could mention Historia’s name to her, but he decides he should back to the room and face Jean. He’s spent the afternoon and evening steeling himself and now he’s ready to talk. And it’s with this new sense of the determination that he pushes open the door to their room, only to find it empty.

He’s filled with a sense of unease. Where would Jean go besides the room after dinner? To the baths? But they’d bathed this morning, as they’d always done as trainees. He supposes that Jean could have gone for a walk; it’s logical now that their time isn’t dictated by officers and duties. He can’t fault Jean for taking his freedom, especially when he’s kept to himself all day. Just, he’d finally felt prepared, and now he has to wait.

Well, he has a mission anyway. He finds a maid doing some evening dusting and asks her for some candles and matches. He complains that the crystal light hurts his eyes, that he’s not used to it yet. As he walks back with a bundle of beeswax candles in his pocket, he remembers what Jean said about the light last night. “_It reminds me of that stupid cave.”_ Well, maybe he’ll appreciate Armin’s efforts then.

The candles lit and his notes burned, Armin settles in to wait. It’s hot again tonight so he opens the window and strips down to his underclothes. He perches on the window bed and takes out a serial he bought at newsstand in a town they’d passed through on their way to Mitras. The mystery is easily solved, and the characters’ speeches are absurdly melodramatic, but the pictures are nice and it’s something to do.

An hour passes, then another. The candles burn lower. Armin begins to wonder if Jean is spending his time with someone else since Armin pushed him away so hard. It makes him feel pathetic that he’s waiting all alone for Jean to come back to him, like one of the society wives in his serial story. And this sense of being pitiful wears at his resolve to actually talk to Jean.

Just when he’s thinking of giving up and going to sleep, the latch on the door opens, and Jean steps in, wearing civilian clothes—a hat, a waistcoat, black pants. He looks around, taking in all the candles and Armin stretched out on his bed. “Oh, hello . . . er, were you waiting for me?”

“No,” Armin says automatically, suddenly aware of how underdressed he is compared to Jean. He should have anticipated that.

Jean raises his eyebrow at him.

“Yes,” Armin admits, sheepish. “Where were you?”

Jean pulls a face. “I went to walk around Mitras, just to see more of the town for myself. It was alright at first and I had a drink in a pub, but then some drunks started pestering me and I got lost on my way back.” He sits down on his bed with a sigh, pulling off his hat and unbuttoning his waistcoat. “You know what? All that time in training, I wanted to come here and have a better life, but when I’m outside the palace, this town city doesn’t seem all that different from Trost. That would’ve been some joke on me.”

“Historia’s scones are nice."

Jean laughs. “Yeah, I guess so. But she's the queen. The other people? Their lot seems pretty much like everyone else’s.”

Armin puts his serial on the table by his bed and sits up to face Jean. “So, you don’t regret your choice to join the Survey Corps?”

“Oh, I regret it all the time,” Jean replies cheerfully, kicking off his shoes. “I’d rather be here than outside the Walls any day. But I couldn’t have done differently, after Trost. And,” he adds, fingers working on the buttons to his shirt. “You definitely couldn’t be anywhere else . . . and if I’m going to be here, I am glad to be here with you.”

He meets Armin’s gaze then, a little wary a little hopeful. Armin gulps. No more waiting, it’s time to talk.

“I’m glad to be here with you too and . . . and I want to have a relationship. I want to . . .” he takes a deep breath and continues. “I want to sleep in the same bed, kiss, h-have sex. But I want to keep it a secret outside these walls, even though it’s hard. I want us to be careful.”

Jean nods. He doesn’t look upset, just thoughtful, and a little bit of tension leaves Armin’s body. “Okay. And how do you want us to do that?”

“Well, we should vary where we sit in meetings and events, and we should be careful about touching or physical affection outside. And we shouldn’t um . . . mark each other, where others can see.”

Jean blushes but nods again. “Okay, I follow. But I also have a request for you.”

Armin looks him in the eye. “I’m listening.”

“I know it’ll be hard sometimes, but when we can I want us to find spaces for ourselves. Rooms together, places where we can go. I get why we have to be a secret, but I want us to actually _be_ something, if that makes sense?”

That might be difficult sometimes, yes, but not impossible. And more importantly, Armin realizes it’s what he wants too.

“Deal,” Armin breathes. “Can I come over there?”

“If you close the window first,” Jean replies with a smirk, nodding over at it.

“Of course, I was going to do that!” Armin notices that he’s shaking spite of the heat when he stands up. They’re really going to do this; this is really happening. When the shutter snaps shut, he takes a minute by the window to compose himself then turns to face Jean.

Jean is sitting right where he’d left him, his shirt half undone. He looks inviting but nervous at the same time, which actually helps to Armin feel a bit calmer. As long as he’s not the only one.

He comes to stand in front of Jean, and they study each other for a long moment.

“You want this?” Jean asks again in a quiet voice. “For real?”

“Yes,” Armin replies firmly. Then he gently pushes Jean onto the bed by his shoulders and climbs on top of him to straddle his hips. They’ve been this close before—they were just as close yesterday morning. But there’s something about knowing more is going to happen, knowing that they both want it and have agreed to it, that heightens the tense ache in Armin. Below him, Jean’s breath is coming ragged, a sign that he feels the same way. Taking pity on them both, Armin closes that final distance to kiss Jean’s lips.

The first few kisses are soft and brief, but then Jean’s hands wind themselves into Armin’s hair and his mouth opens, and it’s like a lever is flipped inside Armin and the flood gates of his desire are opened up. He pushes himself against Jean as the kiss turns sloppy, his fingers digging into the mattress on either side of Jean’s head. He moans and bucks his hips when Jean breaks their kiss to suck on his neck. It’s sticky and messy, but good—why is he so sensitive there? He vaguely remembers reading something in a book about the nervous system and its connection to sensation, but his head’s too fuzzy to really think about that now. Instead, he tries an enjoyable experiment, kissing and licking from Jean’s own jawline to his collarbone. And when Jean groans as a result, he can feel himself hardening.

What’s really exciting about sex, he decides as he unbuttons Jean’s shirt the rest of the way, is this feeling of connection and response. Obviously, it feels good when Jean touches him, but it feels just as good in a direct physical sense to touch Jean as well. And so, when he finally gets Jean out of his shirt, he sits back and lets his hands glide over all his torso to search for nice reactions. Jean’s breath catches when Armin’s fingers brush against his nipples and he bites his lip when Armin’s fingers glide down his hips.

“What do you want?” Armin asks, drifting his nails over Jean’s skin and delighting in the goosebumps that form there.

“Fuck if I know. Everything?” Jean growls out, then gasps when Armin shifts his hips against his. “That. I w-want that. And I want,” he pulls at Armin’s shirt, tugging him back down on top of him. “I want to kiss more.”

Armin obliges him immediately, pushing his hips against Jean’s so that their erections rub against each other through the fabric of Armin’s underwear and Jean’s pants. At the same time, Jean holds Armin against him, kissing him intensely while his own hips push upward. Armin finds himself whimpering a little as the pressure builds within him, his sweat sticking his undershirt to his back. Sometimes Jean can’t seem to concentrate on the kiss while they frot and just breathes against Armin’s mouth, and somehow Armin finds that incredibly arousing too, excited by the idea that Jean is too lost in the pleasure to focus.

“F-fuck!” he gasps out at one of these moments. “A-ah! Ar-min! It’s good, it’s so good but . . . it’s dry can we, uh, can we take our . . . pants off, c-can we touch?”

“Y-yeah,” Armin pants, sitting back from Jean. Whether it’s from his sweat or his pre-cum, he doesn’t feel so dry himself, but he wants it to feel even better for Jean too. And it makes his heart sing to hear Jean call his name in such a desperate voice.

After a little bit of maneuvering, they both strip down completely and sit naked across from each other on the bed, eyeing their erections. Armin is a little pleased that they’re both basically the same size, though his is a little thicker than Jean’s and Jean’s a little more curved. The pause to remove their clothes creates a bit of awkwardness between them, one which Jean tries to breach by leaning forward to kiss Armin’s neck again, one of his free hands circling around a nipple with Armin’s thumb.

And that’s _good_. So good Armin’s nails dig into the skin of Jean’s back, making the other boy hiss. And then Jean bites and Armin cries out.

“Too hard?” he asks immediately, but Armin shakes his head.

“N-nice,” is all he manages. “Please.”

“Shit,” Jean murmurs against his skin and bites again. Between that and Jean’s continued attention to his nipple, Armin feels like he’s going to explode.

He reaches for Jean’s dick and gently starts to stroke it, spreading the pre-cum around to lubricate it. Jean tenses and then sighs, his breath warm and wet against Armin’s ear.

“Y-yeah, like that but maybe a . . . a bita spit,” Jean grunts. Eager to help his partner, Armin raises his fingers to his mouth and sucks on them for a moment, then spreads the makeshift lubricant over him.

Jean lets out a long shaky breath.

“You look good when you do that, s-suck your fin-gers ah! I mean.”

Then he kisses Armin, slower this time, his tongue running along the roof of Armin’s mouth. Moaning, Armin fumbles for Jean’s hand and places it on his dick.

“Woah, you get pretty, ah, wet,” Jean breaks their kiss to say. Armin can only nod, words escaping him at this point.

Somehow, even though any pair of hands should theoretically be like another, Jean’s fingers feel amazing around his cock. Right now, there’s something about being touched by another person, even a little clumsily as Jean tries to figure his body out, that adds of a level of intensity beyond what he feels when he masturbates. But also, Armin gets the sense that it’s very important the person stroking him and holding him is Jean.

They rub each other and kiss until the tension becomes unbearable for Armin, his mouth opening to let out an odd assortment of moans and whines until—

“AHH! FUCK!” Jean cries out, startling Armin. It’s a split-second warning for the warm cum that comes spilling out all over his hand, and he looks at Jean’s face to see his eyes closed, mouth open in a silent scream, eyebrows scrunched together. Jean shakes and it reverberates through Armin’s body. Jean moves his hand faster around his cock, a bit desperate. And Armin finds he likes to see Jean desperate.

“Ooooohhh!” Armin lays his forehead against Jean’s neck, breathing heavily as wave of intense pleasure wash over him. “Oh no oh no oh noo-ooo-oo! OH! Please! OH JE-aaannn!” He feels the orgasm wrack his body like a crash, shuddering with the aftershock while Jean holds him.

And then they’re still, the room quiet except for their breathing and the puttering of the candles. They stay close though, the skin-to-skin contact dulling the aching emptiness that comes after the intense high of connection sex gave them. After a minute, Jean bends his neck to kiss the top of his Armin’s damp head.

_Thanks, Connie. Thanks for forcing me to room with Jean._

* * *

“Eren wants what?”

Armin winces at Jean’s incredulous tone.

“He wants to room with me once we get the orphanage site. He said it's not really working out with Connie.”

Armin doesn’t repeat everything that Eren told him; that Connie had apparently wanted to room with him so badly to pepper him with questions about titans, to discuss the possibility that his titanized mother could be cured, and to talk with him about all of his emotions surrounding Reiner’s betrayal. Eren, apparently tired out by all this talking, was hoping to get a little bit of space with them when they changed location next week.

Jean and Armin are walking around the cloistered palace garden a half an hour before Historia’s coronation, their medals back on their necks and their dress uniforms freshly pressed for the big day. They talk quietly and they keep an appropriate foot of distance between them as they turn circles in the garden.

“Okay, but you promised that every opportunity we had to have privacy together, we’d take it,” Jean reminds him in a pained voice. “Can’t you just say no?”

“Well, he’d question me,” Armin tries. “And I can’t come up with a good excuse.”

“You don’t have to! You can just say no.”

Armin sighs. “No, it’s not the simple. Besides, Eren isn’t himself, you can see it too, right? We only have a couple of months until we start our operation in Shiganshina and we need him at his best. Shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to make him comfortable?”

Jean crosses his arms over his chest, frowning. “But also, Shiganshina is going to be extremely dangerous and I want to spend what are possibly my last two months with you.”

That image makes Armin’s heart leap to this throat. He curses himself. He can’t let his attachment to Jean get in the way of the success of the mission in anyway. As much as he wants to survive and spend more time with Jean, the mission is always more important.

_That’s the life we both signed up for._

“We can still have sex and spend time together,” he wheedles. “We’ll be together all the time, I promise. We just won’t sleep in the same place.”

“Seriously? Sleeping with you is one of my favorite parts. Not just because you help me sleep better, but also it’s just nice to have you there, even in this awful fucking heat.”

In spite of the fact that he feels awful about letting Jean down, his heart is warmed that Jean is so sentimental about sleeping together. It almost makes him falter . . . but he can’t. Discreet. They have to be discreet.

“Please, Jean. I kind of already told Eren I would.”

Jean closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose. “Fuck. Fuck. Okay. Fine, break your promise then. But there better be some very convenient not-at-all-uncomfortable barns to fuck in nearby, and we both better survive Shiganshina to fuck more in nice beds afterwards.”

Armin smiles his apology. “I’ll try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Mirandafandomette for beta reading this and thanks twoboys-onesoul for hosting Jearmin Week 2019!
> 
> This chapter was a little harder to write than the other one, and ended up longer than I expected. I also have to say that the themes of forbidden romance and library continue through this chapter; I didn't plan that but it's kinda fun :) I think this is also my most literal interpretation of the prompts.
> 
> Sorry also if there are some typos left, I tried to catch them all, but my eyes are little tired and I can't keep looking at this draft. I'll check it again later and if you see one that really bothers you, I won't mind if you point it out!


	3. Wall Maria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My submission for days 5 and 6 of Jearmin Week 2019, Historical and Fantasy. Spoilers for the end of season 3 and chapter 90 of the manga!
> 
> Edit: this chapter also contains a detailed description of dissociation. I'm sorry for not including this warning when I first published this! It's in the tags but not properly highlighted ><

_ Year 851, Shiganshina _

There are no stairs on the Walls, no way for just any person to climb them. You need military-grade 3DM gear or some kind of elevator. When he was a child, Armin had noticed this and wondered about it; how had humans built these seamless stone monoliths to be so inaccessible, even to themselves?

Now he knows how. He also knows why.

He stands at the base of Wall Maria, looking up to where it disappears into the morning mist. He gives his gear one last cursory check to make sure he’s properly strapped in, then aims a cable some ten meters up. Using carefully controlled jumps, he scales the fifty meters of wall and heaves himself over the lip.

If he had changed into his titan form, he would have been able to see over the Wall just by standing on his own two feet. But, besides the fact that transforming into the Colossal on this side of the wall would certainly damage the recently rebuilt buildings of Shiganshina’s merchant district, his fragile human body is a better vessel for his fragile human desire to view the sunrise.

He chose this area of the Wall because he suspected it would be relatively empty, and his guess proves correct. Tens of meters away he can see the outlines of lookouts doing their morning patrols and manning the canons, but they’re not close enough to talk to him or ask him questions. At this distance they also won’t be able to tell who exactly he is and eye him with suspicion and fear. Or, even worse, with scorn.

_ “ _ That’s _the soldier they chose to inherit the Colossal Titan? Over Commander Smith? What were they thinking?”_

And he can’t tell them that honestly, he would have picked Erwin too, but he hadn’t exactly had a say in the matter. He thinks it often, but he’s not supposed to speak these thoughts to anyone because it would lower morale. Especially not today, the day before the Survey Corps’ symbolic first journey to the borders of their island.

Armin walks over to the rim of the wall and squints into the bright horizon. Even from up here he can’t make out anything of the ocean that supposedly lies beyond the distant hills. He’s been trying since he was a cadet, even though he knows it’s impossible. The First King knew what he was doing when he picked this isolated spot on the edge of the world; the ocean and the ships that land periodically to dispatch and titanize mainland Eldian prisoners are completely hidden from view. They’re all alone out here.

All alone yet watched. Because they’re Eldians.

He sits down on his knees, his 3DM gear rattling and clunking against the wall.

Armin can’t quite wrap his head around this new Eldian identity of his. His whole life, he’s wanted to know more about the world. According to the Order of the Walls, the once official religion of every citizen, that desire made him a heretic. No one was supposed to ask questions about what was out there. Supposedly, there was only the inexplicable hordes of titans and certain death. Now, after finally venturing into Eren’s father’s old basement and uncovering his history as an outsider, they have more information. Everyone living within in the Walls is purportedly an Eldian, a bloodline of people cursed by some mystical being named Ymir with the power of transforming into titans. Because they allegedly used their powers for world domination, the rest of humanity despised and feared them, and eventually sought to enslave them. Therefore, a little over a hundred years ago, the First King of the Walls had removed a certain number of his people to this island and wiped their memories with the special power of the founding titan; he did this because he wanted them to die out in peace. It was apparently what they deserved.

He can deal with being a pariah. That’s not new to him. But the specific reasons he is one don’t make sense to him this time around. He chose to be a heretic, in some sense; he did certain things marked as “heretical.” But what does it mean for Armin and Eren and the rest of them to be Eldians? Until they found Grisha Yeager’s journals and life-captured pictures, most people on the island had never even heard that name. They’d spent their whole lives calling themselves humans, differentiating themselves from the monsters that threatened to eat them, and then they learned that to the rest of the world, they and the monsters were one and the same.

_ Is it really possible that only one strand of human bloodline can be cursed? And what if Grisha is right, and the Eldians never conquered anyone? _

Armin’s never been comfortable with only have one source for his evidence. He had been a heretic, after all. At the moment, they’re relying on Grisha’s journals and what memories of his Eren has managed to access, and Armin worries this single perspective, while informative, also restricts their understanding of the situation. If only they could talk to someone else . . . but there is no one else, not yet anyway . . . except there is Annie, still locked away in her crystalline form . . . if they could somehow wake her, talk to her about her own experiences as an Eldian soldier in Marley . . .

He sighs and rubs his temples. He’d hoped that by coming up here, he might be able to feel something good again, some kind of anticipation or excitement. Instead, he’s just anxious, stuck in the past. The ocean that had symbolized freedom for so long in his mind now looks a lot like another wall. In fact, that wide open world he had dreamed about for so long is full of walls, and he’s been gifted with a second chance at life to help his friends try to change that.

It should have been Erwin.

Yes, it’s hard to hope when the Walls’ most visionary commander had died in a suicide charge to buy his most trusted soldiers time to complete their mission. It’s even harder when, given the option to save a mortally wounded Erwin, Captain Levi had chosen Armin instead, saddling him with the burden of eating a once-friend to gain his titan powers, along with the responsibility of using those powers for the good of everyone living inside the Walls.

_ And now I’m cursed. If we don’t find a way to stop Marley from wiping us out before my thirteen years are over . . . before Eren’s six years are over . . . _

Here is another difficulty. Eren’s time is even more limited than Armin’s because he’s possessed titan powers from the age of nine. Without any more titan serum, the Eldians within the Walls wouldn’t be able to pass these titans on once Armin and Eren’s bodies finally gave out from the strain of constant transformations.

_ And even if that were possible, I wouldn’t want anyone else to eat me. I don’t want anyone else to go through that. _

His stomach clenches. This is not what he came up here to think about. He came here to appreciate the sunrise. But now he’s queasy. He decides to try to walk it off.

The movement combined with the high-altitude wind helps, though he nervously avoids eye contact with the lookouts he passes. He tries not to speed up to walk by them; he doesn’t want to look like he’s running away from their assessing eyes.

As he approaches one of the crystalline titan traps, he catches sight of familiar figure.

“Eren.”

His friend looks up and nods. The breeze whips his shaggy dark hair in all directions, making him appear even wilder than usual. But there’s something dead in his expression these days, a flatness to eyes that’s difficult for Armin to read. In an earlier time, Armin might have asked him what was bothering him, but after what happened in Shiganshina, Armin feels an incredible distance between himself and the childhood friend who fought so hard to resurrect him.

“I was just checking the traps,” Eren explains before Armin can ask. He stares down into the rivet on the wall, crisscrossed with shimmering spikes, a craftsman surviving his handiwork. “Hange told me it’s been three months since they caught a titan.”

“Yes, the island should be clear when we journey out tomorrow.”

_ Unless Marley shows up with a fresh batch of titans. _The words hang unsaid in the air between them.

Eren puts his hand on a piece of crystal fused to the wall, almost like it’s growing from the rock. _Well, it grew out of him._ _And these walls aren’t really rock, they grew out of titans too. Really, they’re all the same substance._

“We’ve both gotten our dreams now, haven’t we?” Eren asks. His face is still blank, but he sounds a little melancholy to Armin, a little wistful. It loosens something that’s been sealed up within him since Eren (and Levi) brought him back from the brink of death all those months ago.

“It’s not what I expected,” Armin admits. “I mean, I’d considered the possibility of other humans beyond the Walls, but not that they would be so hostile, or that they’d be the source of titans. It changes things, doesn’t it?”

Eren turns his face away, towards the sun. The light glaring from the crystal blurs the lines of his face, completely obscuring it from Armin’s view.

“No.” When he speaks, his voice is cold. “It changes nothing. You should be happy to see the ocean tomorrow, Armin. I’m happy that we’ve finally rid ourselves of these monsters.”

“They were human once, like us.” Armin can’t hold back a note of pleading. This is, after all, the problem they’ve been grappling with for almost two years now. How can Eren be so dismissive of the titans, even after everything they’ve learned?

“But they’re not anymore. I heard Ymir say once that living as a mindless titan was a prison. At least they’re free from that now.”

Ah yes, free. There’s nothing Eren cares about more than being free. But there are all kinds of slavery.

Armin can’t think of how to respond to this pronouncement. Fortunately, he’s saved from trying by the toll of the city bells.

“We should get back,” he says. “Commander Hange wants to go over the formation for tomorrow again, and then we’re all under orders to help pack the supply carts.”

“Right.” Eren turns abruptly from the crystal trap and walks to the opposite edge of the wall, already shooting a cable out of the 3DM cannister strapped to his hip. “Let’s go.”

They rappel down to the ground together, their feet stirring up small clouds of dust as they land. Surveying the city as morning’s light finally spills over the lip of Wall Maria, it’s still a mess. Well, this place seen two titan battles, both involving the Colossal titan. And Armin was there for both of them. That’s a little weird to think about, so he tries not to, but there are reminders everywhere around him. All along the road back to the barracks, builders are setting to work restoring what was lost years ago. Part of Armin’s practice transforming into the Colossal was lifting rocks his titan’s previous owner had scattered throughout the city during their final confrontation.

He shivers even though it’s shaping up to be a pretty warm day, clear and cloudless. He would never say this to Eren and Mikasa, but being back in Shiganshina doesn’t feel like coming home. He can walk down what’s left of the old streets and remember the days he spent here as a child, reading his grandfather’s heretical tracks and trailing after his friends, but more often scenes of the first carnage come into his mind. Here is where he warned Hannes to go get Eren and Mikasa as they tried to rescue their mother, here is where he and his grandfather boarded one of the last boats to Wall Rose. Or he recollects his more recent foray here, when he flung himself into Bertolt’s steam to buy Eren time to disable his titan. Of course he doesn’t know exactly what happened next, but his body still carries echoes of the fear he felt that day, the panic when he almost gave up hope that he would be able to come up with a plan to save them, and the profound grief when he awoke and learned how many people had died in this mission.

And what he’d done.

Eren is silent as they make their way through town, and Armin can’t decide if he’s glad of that or not. Talking would be distracting, but he finds he’s a bit afraid of what his friend might say. He hopes that Eren is, like him, just struggling to come to terms with Grisha’s revelations. Lately Eren has been making cryptic proclamations like what he said on the wall just now, seeming not to care anymore about the previous humanity of the mindless titans. Or maybe he cares too much and can’t handle it? Armin hopes that’s it. He understands that perspective at least. After all, he’s had to make peace with the fact that he had killed people during the coup, and is still struggling to come to terms with eating Bertolt . . .

Some bile rises in his throat, but he swallows it back. It burns on the way down.

Why did eating another human being seem so much worse than killing him? Eren had eaten his father, and his father had eaten Frieda Reiss and Eren Kruger before that in order to gain their titan powers. Strategically, it made sense that they rob the Marleyans of one of their biggest assets and save one of their own soldiers in the process—Eren and Levi, they had done the right thing. Well, maybe they shouldn’t have saved _Armin_, but it was too late to think along those lines. All he had to worry about now was doing the best he could with the time he had been granted.

No, in these circumstances, eating another human was perhaps even more justified than killing him. If they had just killed Bertolt, after all, his power would have been transferred to a random Eldian baby. Who knows which Eldian would have been selected? Maybe someone in Marley. And Bertolt, he would never have willingly elected to help them, probably. His time as a shifter had been running out anyway. No, better to have the power. And better to have Armin than nobody at all. Bertolt had been his friend at one time, yes, but he’d been trying to kill them, and he’d destroyed Shiganshina . . . so the person Armin had considered a friend wasn’t really Bertolt, who had been lying to them and manipulating them, putting on a face . . . so what if he was only a child when he was recruited? He could have changed sides at any time and yet he chose to destroy this place with the powers that Armin now held . . .

He blinks around at Shiganshina. Under the bright sun, it looks so flat and unreal. People go about their business, unaware that a monster like him his walking amongst them, unaware of what it’s like to wake up when you thought you should be dead and hear that you had eaten someone . . .

_ Like nothing ever happened. _

A few streets over from the barracks, a peculiar prickling sensation starts in Armin’s fingers and toes. It’s so light he almost doesn’t notice it at first, and then it stops almost as soon as he does.

Then, at the next corner, a strange weightlessness overtakes him, and time around him seems to slow down. This is more unnerving. He tries to ask Eren if he feels it too, but when he speaks, he hears his own voice as if from far away. As if it’s not coming out of his own mouth.

“What’s wrong Armin? Shit, you look pale.”

Something is indeed very wrong. Armin is floating now, hovering a little outside of his body, between himself and Eren, watching their conversation play out as if through thick, warped glass.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” he hears himself say. “I think maybe I’m dreaming.” He lifts a hand and pinches himself. It doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t feel anything at all, actually. “Yes, that must be it.” It’s a bit of a relief to realize this.

_ And if this is a dream, maybe all of it is. _

Eren is alarmed now. “You are definitely not dreaming. C’mon, we have to get you back to the medics!”

Armin tries to protest as Eren wraps an arm around his waist to help him walk. That’s not the problem, he can walk just fine, though it’s weird to not feel the sidewalk below his feet. But Eren doesn’t listen, he just tightens his grip. Or, Armin presumes he does; he watches the fingers clutch the fabric of his shirt, but there’s no corresponding pressure in his side. He closes his eyes and gives in, letting Dream-Eren lead him wherever this is going to go.

_Maybe when I open my eyes, the dream will change, and it’ll be Jean holding me instead. That would be nicer. I do miss the feeling of his hands on me._

“Hange!” Eren is calling. Armin sighs and opens his eyes; the scene is still basically how he left it. He’s still a little outside his body, watching the breeze play with the whispy blonde hairs on the back of his head. He wouldn’t be able to see that if this wasn’t a dream.

Right?

Their commander comes striding up to them, their eyepatch making their frown appear more stern than maybe they intend. Eren is explaining the situation, looking between the two of them almost frantically. Armin thinks it must be annoying to have him yelling so close to his ear, but again, he observes from a distance, and Eren’s voice comes to him slightly muffled.

Hange peers into his eyes, their face inches from his own. He wonders that he doesn’t react so much to it; after all, he usually hates to have someone so close.

“This is worrying. It’s possible that this has something to do with your titan, but I’ve also heard of something like this before as a kind of reaction to stress or trauma.”

_Stress? Trauma? But I was just walking . . ._

“What do we do?” Eren demands. His concern suddenly irks Armin. He only ever seems to make a fuss when Armin is at his weakest and lowest, like he’s rubbing it in.

_ He doesn’t mean to. It’s how he shows he cares . . . _

“Well, I think he should try resting first. Let’s get him to his room.”

“But the meeting,” Armin watches himself protest.

“I’ll send you a copy of the formation to look over later. I trust you to learn it and understand it on your own, you’re good at that.” Hange squeezes his shoulder, perhaps to reassure him. It’s an oddly tender gesture from them, Armin observes dispassionately. “I understand that it’s frustrating, but it’s really better if you rest.”

They come with Eren to Armin’s room on the second floor of the barracks. A twice-decorated soldier and one of their two precious titan shifters, Armin has private quarters now. Small private quarters that just consist of a bed, a washbasin, and a desk, but it’s still a highly coveted prize in among members of the military. Hange instructs him to stay in bed and brings him a glass of water. Armin watches himself drink it, supposing that it must be cooling and refreshing.

“How do you feel?” They ask while Eren hovers.

“Fine,” Armin lies, even though he’s still somehow separated from his physical body, floating along in this dream-like state.

Hange raises their good eyebrow. “I have to ask, Armin . . . did you, er, take something? Some kind of supplement or medicine?”

Armin shakes his head. “I don’t do that, Commander.”

“Well . . .” They crouch by his bed and lean forward conspiratorially. “I know they’re forbidden, but if you _did_ take something, it’s really better if you tell me now. We can’t treat you properly otherwise. In this case, er, rule violations could be overlooked.”

_Special privileges because I’m the Colossal titan. _Under other circumstances the notion might frustrate Armin, but right now he’s so detached he can only seem to notice that it’s happening. “I don’t do drugs, Commander.”

Hange nods, finally accepting it.

“And you’ve eaten?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“Then I think you just have to try to rest.” He opens his mouth to protest but they cut him off with an admonishing finger. “Nope! We need you along on the operation tomorrow. So, you have to do your best to recover. Try to rest, and we’ll check in on you after the meeting to see how you’re doing. We’ll get the medics in to have a look as well.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Armin lays back on the bed and closes his eyes. Yet now, perhaps because of the distance, he watches it happen—he sees himself laying as if in sleep, sees Eren and Hange softly pad out of the room. _How?_ He must be dreaming, right? Or is this some kind of titan magic he hasn’t anticipated? If so, Eren hasn’t mentioned it. _Or maybe he’s never succumbed to it, because he’s stronger than you. He’s your shining prince, always coming along to save you._

He snorts. It scrunches up his little snub nose in an ugly way that floating-Armin finds kind of appealing.

_But really, it’s disturbing how quickly Eren goes from cold and distant to soft and supportive when he thinks you’re swooning. Come to think of it, he’s been doing that forever, hasn’t he? In Shiganshina, he so wanted to beat up the bullies for you . . . like he had something to prove. Maybe he wanted to save you so badly for those types of reasons, not because he really thought you’d be useful. Sure, he swooped in to defend you when Floch challenged him about picking you over Erwin, but when has he asked for your advice recently, or talked about to you anything that he’s thinking?_

Armin’s sees his thick eyebrows furrow. He sighs and opens his eyes.

He hates to feel weak, he’s so tired of it. Here he is, lying in bed while everyone else is at the meeting. If he were Erwin, this wouldn’t be happening. Erwin wouldn’t just be _at_ the meeting also, he’d be running it, and Hange could continue focusing on the science of the titans, as had been their original specialty. Not that they didn’t make a great commander, obviously they did, but they seemed so tired and subdued where they had once been buoyant and energized.

Wow, he really needs to stop wallowing.

Armin hisses out air through his teeth as an experiment. Still no feeling. He pinches up and down his arms, hard enough to leave red splotches. Nothing. He doesn’t dare do anything more, for fear that it would break his skin. In addition to causing further carnage, he doesn’t want to be in this state while in titan form, watching himself as he stomps on buildings and people . . .

Maybe if he focuses on something in his environment for a while, distracts himself from his profound detachment?

Armin sits up and gazes out the window. He has a very good view of the stables from here, which he actually enjoys. There are always people coming in and out of those doors and he can watch them at his leisure, speculate about their private dramas. It’s grounding to see people going about their ordinary tasks. Today, they are many soldiers out and about in the yard, carrying supplies into waiting carts, walking horses. The plan for tomorrow is to scout along the coast for a good place to build a foremost base, a place where they can watch the ocean for approaching ships. Or flying crafts, apparently, according to Eren’s visions. That concept is terrifying and exciting all at once. If his parents had lived to see that . . . no, best not to think about them right now. Best to focus on the normalcy of cart-loading instead.

And it actually seems to settle him a bit, for a few minutes. There’s something almost meditative in it. That is, until Squad Leader Jean Kirstein walks out of the stable leading a horse, a talking and laughing with a garrison soldier Armin doesn’t recognize.

Armin ducks instinctively, even though he knows Jean probably can’t see him up here.

He doesn’t _avoid_ Jean these days, exactly. They still share meals together with Connie, Sasha, Mikasa, and Eren, and obviously they all attend military meetings. Armin can be very polite and cordial with Jean. But he doesn’t seek him out anymore either, not since that terrible day several months ago, when Armin had decided it was best for the both of them if he ended their romantic relationship.

_ “I just don’t understand,” Jean repeats, his voice breaking. _

_ “What’s not to understand?” Armin knows he sounds unhinged, but he’s exhausted, and his emotions are leaking out of him every which way. “I’m going to die, Jean. I almost did die! Do you want to go through that again?” _

_ Jean curses and throws his hands up in the air. “I’ve told you, I’m prepared for that. Fuck, if you only have . . . only have . . . thirteen years, I don’t want to waste any of our time!” _

_ “Well I have to use these thirteen years to pay back a gift,” Armin reminds him through clenched teeth, fresh, hot tears spilling down his cheeks. Fuck, he’s so tired of crying. “I have to use this power to help our people.” And to make up for taking what should have been Erwin’s, he almost adds, but holds it back. He doesn’t want to start that discussion again. _

_ There’s a pause while Jean takes a breath to steady himself. Then continues, “If . . . if you don’t want me, give me a reason that’s about me or about us. Don’t act like a martyr, like you’re preserving me. I don’t fucking want that, I want you.” _

_For one freeing second, Armin considers lying. Jean has given him an opening; he could use it. It would be so easy. Just a few words about how his feelings have dwindled and the passion is gone . . . well, it literally has because it’s hard to contemplate the idea of sex in this borrowed body, resurrected from certain death through the horrible ritual of eating another human, a once-friend even. But he knows Jean isn’t just talking about sex. Jean will push him until he says that he doesn’t care about him anymore in any capacity._

_ He opens his mouth to fling something to that effect at his once-lover, but no sound comes out. _

_ Sensing Armin’s weakness, Jean takes a tentative step closer. “Please, Armin,” he continues in in a softer voice. “Please don’t run away. Trust me, let me . . . fuck! I just l-love you, okay?” _

_ Startled, Armin blinks up at him. Love? _

_ Unfortunately, Jean has always been able to read him. “Yes, I love you. I think you love me. And if you do, why can’t we try?” _

_Looking at Jean in his rumpled clothes with purple bags under his eyes, he feels a stab of pity. _How can I do this to him? How can I hurt him like this? How do I make it stop?

_ “You’ll be able to lo . . . love other people. People who will live longer and aren’t . . . monsters,” he tries. _

_ Jean scowls. “Fuck that! What bullshit. You’re not a monster. And so what if I can love other people? That doesn’t mean I don’t love you right here, right now and if you love me too then—” _

_“It’ll be hard!” Armin yells, fed up with Jean and his ridiculous optimism. Whatever happened to his defeatism? “Love is hard and I’ll think everyday about how I can’t give you want you want because I don’t belong in this body or because I’m dying or because I should be working to repa—to fulfill my duties as a shifter! Your love won’t solve everything magically, it won’t be enough to keep you going when I start to decay. You’re a distraction to me, I’m a distraction to you. Just, think of me as dead already, if it helps.”_

_ “Stop! Fuck! Armin!” Jean starts pacing, more on edge than Armin has ever seen him, and he’s seen Jean on edge a lot. “Can you just, stop patronizing me for two seconds, please! You haven’t been able to tell me you don’t want me. You just keep feeding me bullshit about why it wouldn’t work. Of course my love doesn’t fucking fix anything, of course it’ll be hard, but we have something here, and I just don’t get why you don’t even want to try?” _

_Why does he have to keep pushing like this? “No,_ you’re_ patronizing _me_, by acting like you know what I need better than I do!” He cries instead. “You’re not listening to me at all. I said I don’t want to keep our relationship, and that’s final!”_

_The silence that follows is tense and oppressive. They lock eyes for what feels like an eternity. Armin isn’t sure if he wants the contact to break or not and so he holds his breath, waiting for Jean to make a decision. . . and then Jean squares his shoulders._

_“If that’s really want you want,” he says in a quiet voice, so strained he’s obviously holding back great emotion. And then his turns on his heel and storms out the door, slamming it in his wake._

_The quiet returns only briefly before Armin’s body starts heaving with sobs._

Remembering that painful altercation now, Armin tenses. Down below, Jean continues to smile and laugh, handing the horse’s reigns to his companion. Jean is supposed to be overseeing the supply caravan that will follow them to the beach, Armin remembers now. That’s why he must be out here and not in the meeting. He’s torn about this development; he still feels this uncomfortable twist in his stomach whenever he sees Jean, a little flip of desire. Of course, desire is pleasant in an abstract way, but with Jean it comes with all these memories of how much Armin hurt him, how spectacularly he destroyed their relationship. For good reason, he still thinks; better to hurt a bit now than more later, when Armin dies in battle or because of the curse.

Besides, they are on the verge of war. Personal relationships like that, they are liabilities. He remembers the multiple times he baited Bertolt into doing something rash by implying the military brass were torturing Annie and how Eren had literally fought with his commanding officer to get Armin the titan serum. What if Jean were to be captured and tortured himself—how could Armin bear it if he loved him? What kinds of mistakes might he make because he wanted to save Jean or protect him? No, better to spare both of them those hard choices, to numb themselves to each other’s presence and go back to being colleagues.

_But you’ve saved Jean before, multiple times. Once you even jumped off your horse in the middle of a field of titans to protect his unconscious body. You’ve never been setback by fighting for Jean . . ._

_. . . yet._

Something is burning on his face; he touches his cheek and his fingers come back wet. Tears. He blinks them away and feels the fluttering of this eyelashes. Whatever is happening to him, he’s coming back into his own body, though the edges of his vision are still over bright.

Desperate to hold onto any type of physical sensation, Armin presses his forehead to his glass window; since it’s been in the shade, it’s cooling against his skin. He focuses on that feeling, pushing back against the tightness in his chest and throat. But still the tears come.

_Who was that person Jean was talking with? Maybe he really is going to move on . . . fuck, I wanted him to move on, right? He can’t love me, I can’t be in love. Those are facts. He should have someone else; he deserves someone else. But maybe not someone else in the military. He hasn’t learned his lesson at all, has he?_

Armin sucks in a shaky breath, swipes at his eyes with his hands. Yes, he can feel his body now alright, tingling and prickling as his vision adjusts. He also feels the stirrings of a headache, a dull pain right between his eyes. He lays back on the bed, breathing in the scent of the laundry soap, trying to tether himself to the physical world even as his mind seeks to wander again, suddenly obsessed with Jean.

_The linens smelled the same in the queen’s palace, but Jean and I definitely made a mess of them. _One time, he had come back to the room they shared in Mitras before Jean and sat down on one of the beds to read some while he waited. But it had been like stepping into a bath of Jean’s scent, and Armin had almost immediately become hard. Shit, if he tries, he can recall that smell, though imperfectly. It’s deeply unsatisfying.

He massages his pounding now temples.

Sometimes, he tempts himself with the prospect of returning to Jean. Obviously, they would have to be discreet, but as personal aides to Commander Hange now, they had flexibility. They could come up with excuses to room together, eke out a life together in the confines of a military dorm. Armin misses the idea of sex, although he still feels strange in his own body and hasn’t even masturbated since his transformation; in his fantasy, he would focus on helping Jean come as much as Jean wanted, that would probably still be enjoyable for the both of them. More importantly, however, Armin finds he craves the sense of closeness and camaraderie they shared, that feeling of a human connection. Many times, in recent weeks, he’s stood up from his desk determined to go talk to Jean about something—his thoughts about Eren’s behavior, the plans to go to the beach, some aspect of his titan training. But he’s barely made it to the door before he’s talked himself out of it. In his daydreams, he imagines coming back to their shared room and just talking to Jean, asking what he thinks about the day’s events or bouncing theories about military high command off of him. In theory, he could have all of this now if he just reached out to Jean, but he knows it can never be the same because he burned that bridge away.

It’s for the best that he did so, and he knows it. But sometimes in his gut, he feels this _want_ still, and it’s painful, consuming, distracting.

_If only we weren’t at war. If only we weren’t Eldians, whatever that actually means. Then maybe . . ._

He sighs and turns his back to the window, burying his face in his pillow. The pain in his head overtakes him, and he tumbles over the edge of consciousness into sleep.

* * *

Finally standing in the ocean, water lapping at his knees, the intense smell of salt tickling his nose, Armin feels it—the tiniest painful prick of hope.

Behind him, Connie and Sasha splash and squeal. The thrilled pounding of Armin’s heart drowns it out as he bends down to pick out a strange shifting shape by his feet. It’s cold and smooth in his hands and he pulls it up, glittering in the sunlight.

A seashell.

He’s read about these in his grandfather’s book. They’re rock-like protections for sea creatures, the homes they carry on their backs. When the original creatures who grow the shells die, they remain, and sometimes new creatures come to inhabit them, seeking the shells’ protection.

Armin turns to Mikasa, eager to show her his find. She’s coming towards him, carrying her boots in her hands as she wades into the shallows. A larger wave buffets her and she screams, but not in panic; when Armin catches her eye, she’s smiling. Not her melancholy, sweet smile—this is glee.

He can’t help it; he grins back. 

But there’s another person who needs to see the shell, the one who he’s shared this dream with the longest. He looks around for Eren, eager to grant him this sign of hope. _The ocean is real, and we made it!_

Eren is standing deeper in the water, his back to his friends. He stares at the horizon, a haloed shadow against it. Armin starts towards him, water splashing and soaking into his pants. “Eren!” he calls. “See, I told you, Eren! There’s a giant saltwater lake that no merchant can dry up, not in a lifetime!”

Something is blurring Armin’s vision. The sun dancing on the water’s surface? No . . . tears. Burning hot tears . . . of joy!

“What I said wasn’t wrong, was it?”

“It’s so big,” Eren responds, keeping his eyes on the sea.

Armin beams down at his find, the symbol of his victory. In beams back, sparkling shell vindicating him. “Yeah.” He’d dreamed of this day forever, he’d worked so hard to make it happen, and here it is, finally! And Eren is sharing his wonder, just like he’d always imagined. Whatever distance had come between them, it would surely be broken by this. Eren must have hope now too, he must see the amazing beauty of the world.

He holds out his hands and takes another step forward. “Hey, Eren, come and see this--,”

“On the other side of the Walls,” Eren interrupts, the curtness of his voice startling Armin from his euphoria, “is the ocean. And on the other side of the ocean is freedom. We believed that for so long . . . but it’s not true.” He turns to face Armin then, just as Mikasa comes up behind him, her posture wary and tense again. And when he sees Eren’s face, Armin notices immediately that Eren is also crying, but his tears are anguished.

It’s a punch in the stomach. 

“Waiting for us on the other side of the ocean are enemies. Everything is as I saw it in my father’s memories, right? So, if we kill those enemies, the ones waiting for us on the other side, will we finally be free?”

_ Free _.

Armin’s fingers loosen around the shell. He almost drops it back into the water, lets it disappear once again. After all, what is a shell but another wall, and what is his ocean but another reminder of their position as pariahs? The First King had indeed used this sparkling, joyful expanse to put distance between the Eldians of Paradis and the outside world—but not to protect them, to protect the rest of humanity, supposedly.

But then his hands clench around the shell and he stuffs it into his pants pocket, a strange anger boiling under his skin. The ocean has long symbolized freedom to him, and it still could. The Marleyans could not take that away from him—and that was _his_ choice, _his _freedom.

Back at the temporary base camp the military is setting up on the coast, Armin buries the shell in his mattress. It’s unnecessary to hide this small trifle that means nothing to anybody but him, but he finds it comfortable to keep secrets.

He is, after all, a heretic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, thanks for reading!! I have a couple more notes this time for this chapter. First, I'm sorry I'm behind >< I hope to have chapter 4 up soon, even though Jearmin Week just ended. 
> 
> For this chapter, I thought history and not being clear about what is "real" and the "truth" were important questions in the manga itself, especially when the Walldians learn their forgotten history, so I kinda ran with that. My depiction of Eren is also influenced by later events in the manga, which will be address directly in the next chapter, so there will be spoilers there, I'm sorry. For the theme fantasy, I think that's a bit more nebulous; I mostly directly addressed it in Armin fantasizing about Jean, but I think also think there's stuff about Eren's fantasies of a pure kind of "freedom." And the fact that, again, the truth is hard to sort out. Er, neither of those themes are very jearmin-y here; I guess Armin and Jean also have a "history" and they both have their own truths about it.
> 
> The dissociation scene isn't meant to fulfill the prompt "fantasy"! I wrote it because I thought Armin might feel horrified and disconnected from his own being after eating Bertolt. I based it some on my own experiences, some on reading up on possibilities for dissociation. The only thing I'm not sure about is if some people keep seeing things when they close their eyes but I thought it would be possible because your brain is kind of half creating an image of your reality for you to watch so why would it stop if you closed your eyes? And that really hits home the lack of bodily control, if you can't even stop seeing something. I think Armin the manga is someone who likes to feel in control/to gain control of situations (that's why some of his schemes are so manipulative) and when he's "saved" he feels a loss of control there and then also his body did things without him being aware--I think that's part of the horror of the titans.
> 
> Er, at least that was kind of what I was trying to say!
> 
> I also think the anime ends er, a bit lighter than the manga? I haven't watched the last few episodes (er, if you follow me on tumblr you know I'm not a huge huge fan of the anime), but I've seen gif sets of Armin looking joyfully at birds as they ride out to the ocean. But in chapter 90 of the manga, he looks pretty numb and worried until he actually stands in the ocean, so that's the emotional vibe I was going for. His and Eren's dialog at the end is also lifted pretty wholesale from chapter 90.
> 
> Okay, well thanks for keeping to read, I've really appreciated the comments and kudos so far!! Thanks to mirandafandomette for reading it and thanks to twoboys-onesoul@tumblr.com for hosting jearmin week!!!


	4. Paradis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! For prompts "time-skip/free day/old works." Major spoilers for like until chapter 116 of the manga.

_Year 854, the capital city of Mitras_

“So, the funeral is in two days, and I have no idea how we’re going to face her family or Niccolo. Everything just feels so strange now. I keep going to dinner expecting her to be there, and then it . . . it hits me all over again. We’ve lost people before, but I’d kind of. . . well, it almost seemed like the six of us would always make it through.”

Armin’s voice breaks and he clenches his fingers around the shell, trying to siphon his tension into it. He always brings it with him to these talks; staring at its glistening patterns and touching its cool ridges helps to ground him in the moment. When he feels a bit more composed, he continues.

“D-did you ever feel that way? About Bertolt and Reiner and . . . Marcel, right? No . . . I don’t think so, you’re too pragmatic. You must have always expected another one of you to die or get captured. I think the others must have felt you’d come through in the end though, especially Bertolt. But I guess, they could always hope to get you back, since you’re just frozen forever in this crystal . . . right?”

Not for the first time, he wonders how Eren is so certain they’ve not just been keeping Annie’s preserved corpse imprisoned here. She obviously can’t breathe, and it’s hard to fathom that a human being could really go into this type of stasis. But then, Annie isn’t exactly “human,” just like the rest of them.

Armin squeezes the shell again.

“I just don’t get it, why did this happen? Why did that girl get into the airship? And why did she shoot Sasha, of all people? Well . . . to be honest, I more often ask myself, why did Eren take us there . . . why didn’t he just . . . tell us . . . ask us . . .” He takes in a shaky breath. “I . . . I don’t even understand the sides in this war. Once you got here, why did you stay loyal to Marley? Didn’t you realize we weren’t ‘devils’? That’s what the girl who killed Sasha keeps screaming about . . . Gabi. Her name is Gabi Braun. She’s related to Reiner, isn’t that strange? Or maybe it isn’t, maybe you know her too?”

He finally looks up at Annie now, blinking in the brightness of her crystal. It’s so odd to see her preserved exactly as she was that day four years ago, when they were fresh recruits and she was the first titan shifter besides Eren they’d encountered.

“If you really were dead, your titan power would go to someone else, and the crystal would melt away, right?” He sighs and rubs his temple with the tip of the shell. “At this point, you probably don’t want to ever come out. Everyone . . . everyone will be dead soon . . . or maybe you don’t actually care about us, even though we lived together for so many years, training until our feet dropped off . . . no, I’m so-sorry.” Big tears finally come spilling over his eyes. “I . . . I th-think you did care . . . or I probably wouldn’t be talking to you . . .”

It’s not really talking, and he knows it. Just in the past year, every few weeks or so, he’s been coming down here to speak with Annie . . . well, speak _at_ her, more accurately. It started one night when he was particularly fed up with Eren’s insistence that there was no way they could seriously parlay with the Marleyans, that a show of force was the only thing they’d hear. Armin had also been frustrated that much of their information about the outside world was being filtered through Eren’s half-brother Zeke, his faithful minion Yelena, and Sea Kingdom spokesperson Kiyomi Azumabito; he didn’t trust them as far as he could throw them in his human form. Additionally, his ability to access Bertolt’s memories has been spotty at best, perhaps because, as Eren once suggested to him, he’s too squeamish to really try—is it squeamish to be uncomfortable with someone else’s thoughts inside your head, to be afraid of how the boundaries between you and him might erode? In any case, that night he’d stormed down here and slipped past the guards, ready to access Annie’s memories to see if she had some other kind of viewpoint on Marley, but then . . . he’d stopped himself just as he’d put his hand out to try. There was something weird about doing it that way, something . . . violating. Even if it was possible, which wasn’t certain. She’s put this wall up for a reason, after all.

So instead, he’d just sat down and started pleading with her to come out and explain. Somehow this had morphed into him talking to her fairly regularly, keeping her apprised of everything going on . . . as well as his feelings, sometimes.

Yes, he knows why he comes to Annie, it’s not hard to understand. She’s easy to talk to because she doesn’t listen or respond. Anything told to her goes nowhere, does nothing. But it still feels good to actually say things out loud, to go through the motions of having a conversation. He tries to keep himself from projecting too much onto her, aware of that particular danger. She’s not really his friend, he knows this.

In theory.

“It’s silly, but I keep hoping you’ll come out and knock Eren down like you used to. You’d tell him Sasha wasn’t an ‘acceptable casualty’ and that he can’t keeping lying to us and expect us to follow . . . I feel so used. I should . . . shit, I should just punch him myself, shouldn’t I? But you were always the best at it . . . and he respected you. Maybe he still does . . . does he come and talk to you too, Annie? No, probably not even you, even though you always had a thing for him, didn’t you?”

Annie glints down at him, her face as closed and lifeless as ever. He sighs, then pushes himself up off the ground, straightening slowly. “Sometimes, I also hope you never wake up so you can never tell anyone else how pathetic I am.”

That’s selfish of him and he knows it. And incredibly sad. The only time he feels comfortable talking to someone these days is apparently when they can’t talk back at all. He’d say he was just a misanthrope, but the way his heart aches over Sasha reminds him he’s not. No matter how much he doesn’t want to connect, he has already, and he must suffer the consequences.

And if he’s not careful he’s going to get attached to Annie too.

He dashes away the new tears that are threatening to spill out and turns abruptly away from the crystal, like she might actually be able to see him. _Really pathetic. _

“I’ll be back soon, probably,” he tells her, voice shaking. “Not that you care, but . . . goodbye.”

As he walks away from her, he has the absurd feeling of being watched. But when he whips around, her eyes are still closed. As always.

At the top of the stairs out of the cells, Armin peeks his head out the door and, upon seeing that the patrol guard is not coming this way, slips out. Really, they should have better security on Annie. The Military Police obviously think it’s a waste of time to guard a statue, but if he can get in undetected, so could any of the visiting Marleyans. Obviously, he’d prefer not to be seen here either, but it would be disastrous if Annie escaped.

However, the Marleyans really haven’t put that much effort into recovering her. Even Zeke is content to let her sleep, when she could potentially be another titan asset. And no one has suggested eating her to consolidate titan powers; it’s odd. Well, probably neither Armin nor Eren _could_ actually eat Annie in her crystalline state, but he’d expected it to at least occur to a higher up. _It’s like they’ve all forgotten about her._

Maybe that somehow makes her freer than the rest of them.

He’s walking back through the Survey Corps quarters of HQ, absorbed in his questions about why the Marleyans were so content to let Annie gather dust in a dungeon, when he notices Commander Hange’s office door is slightly ajar. It seems like an opportunity. Not for the first time, he wonders if he should go in speak with the commander directly about Eren. Obviously, he knows they’re upset. They’re so upset they actually made a show of court-martialing Eren again, although everyone knows it’s only symbolic. Eren can leave whenever he wants. _And yet he stays. Maybe that’s a good sign? Maybe we could come up with a strategy together of how to convince him to work with us, that we’re not his enemies . . . or just at least talk to us about what he’s thinking, so we can address his concerns!_ But as he gets closer to their door, he hears them speaking, obviously already in a meeting. He decides it’s probably better to not interrupt right now.

“. . . at a time like this.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Armin stops dead in his tracks when Jean’s voice replies, flattening himself to the wall so as not to be seen through the crack in the door.

Hange lets out an exasperated sigh. _What has Jean done?_ Armin knows he should keep walking, that he doesn’t have any good explanation for why he is snooping, even for himself, but suddenly it’s very important to him to know what the two of them are discussing. Eren? The alarming growth of a group calling themselves Yeagerists? Floch’s flippant dismissal of authority? And what does Jean have to be sorry about?

“If you know, then why are you leaving?” Hange finally snaps. “I can hardly replace you; you know that. And these damned, blasted ‘Yeagerists’ are crawling all over me . . . I need loyal people Jean. Smart, loyal people.”

Armin is pretty sure he stops breathing. He feels light-headed, dizzy. _Leaving? Jean is . . . leaving?_

When Jean speaks his voice is calm, but there’s a tightness to it, some emotion he’s struggling to hold back. “With all due respect, Commander, I get why you need people at this time, really, but . . . Liberio . . . and Sasha . . . I just don’t think I can keep doing this anymore.”

Armin eyes begin to blur and burn; he closes his eyes against yet more tears. Walls, he wishes they would stop.

There’s a creaking of wood as Hange presumably shifts in their chair. “That was . . . well, officially, I can only say it was unfortunate, but between you and me, it . . . it should never have happened that way. That’s why I’ve put Eren in jail, though I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep him there in this political climate. Have you seen the papers? He’s the hero of Eldia, apparently. But who were the primary victims of his . . . of _our_ attack?”

“Eldians.” Jean sounds exhausted.

There’s a potent pause, then Hange continues more gently, “I also understand why you’re feeling conflicted right now. Truly, I do. I think we can do more by holding on to our power here, you and me both. Ah, I know you’re not convinced by that or you wouldn’t be here. So, let me ask for this—take a week and really think it over. If, at the end of the week, you feel the same, you may go.”

“Thanks, Commander.”

“Also, I have one condition. Could you please be careful who you mention this too? I don’t want rumors spreading around, lowering morale at this time.”

“Of course.” There’s the sound of a chair scraping against the flagstone floor and Armin realizes he’s still standing out in the hallway, listening in to a private conversation. If Jean finds him here . . . no, he can’t contemplate that. He retreats back down the hallway as noiselessly as he possibly can, his own heartbeat loud in his ears.

Once back around the corner, he almost runs, not thinking particularly hard about where he’s going.

After all these years, Jean wants to leave military . . . the _nerve_.

Honestly, the nerve! After everything they’ve all been through together, Jean wants to leave. And where will he go? What will he do? How could he make it through Trost, Stohess, almost dying outside Wall Rose in pursuit of Reiner and Bertolt, the whole fucking Uprising, and Shiganshina just to get tired here? Why? Because they killed innocents? Well, yeah, but they’d killed people before. Jean is always getting upset about that, it’s true, but he’d coped with it every time. Or is he leaving because of Sasha . . . well, he still has people he calls friends in uniform. Also, if Jean leaves, Connie might follow. It’s always been like that with them, ever since the Uprising. Jean’s a leader, there are many people who look up to him specifically and if he shows he’s lost faith . . . he’s basically shirking all of his responsibilities!

Armin doesn’t remember making it all the way to his room, but now he realizes he’s pacing it. How long has he been here, thinking about Jean leaving? He can feel dried tear tracks on his face. Why does he care _so_ much? It’s Jean’s life, he can do what he wants. And even though it’s been years since they’ve had anything between them and they can interact perfectly politely in public, it would perhaps be easier on him in some ways if Jean isn’t constantly around. Armin has forced himself to get over his ex-sexual partner and has been mostly successful, he thinks, though memories of Jean still slip into his thoughts when he masturbates sometimes. Those are unimportant remnants though. This distance between them is how it should be.

But now he’s just so angry. Well, Jean still listens to him in strategy meetings, respects his opinion when they actually talk. Before he really knows what he’s doing, he’s storming up the stairs to Jean’s own quarters, pounding on the door.

“Fuck!” Jean’s muffled shout rings out. Suddenly the door is being yanked open and Jean stands before him, wearing only his shirt and uniform pants, no jacket. And the shirt is untucked a little bit, giving the impression that he had been in the process of changing. “Who the—oh. Armin.”

Oh. Jean.

Armin feels the burning righteousness that carried him down here bleeding out as he stands on Jean’s threshold, alone with him for the first time in many months. Really, it’s horrible that Jean has grown again in the past couple years, looking down at him from almost a full foot of height difference now. Armin is supposed to be the Colossal titan, but he’s the shortest of their group these days. It’s also horrible that Jean has filled out in the shoulders a bit and has continued to grow out his hair, because actually, he’s incredibly handsome. Armin doesn’t want to rekindle anything between them, obviously, but Jean being handsome now with his beard, and his cheekbones, and his long, lean body makes him less approachable.

“It’s me,” Armin says, then mentally kicks himself. How utterly inane.

“Yeah, it is,” is all Jean can manage back though, so Armin feels like they’re at least on equal footing there. “Where’s the fire?”

Armin squares his shoulders and meets Jean’s assessing eyes. “I need to talk with you about something.”

“Okay, shoot.”

Oh. Now he has to explain that he was eavesdropping. And he’s still in the hallway, surrounded by the dorms of other soldiers. Remembering Hange’s very reasonable request that Jean keep his thoughts to himself for the week, he asks, “In private?”

Jean crosses his arms over his chest and steps back from the door. It’s not the most inviting invitation Armin has ever received, but it’s clear that Jean is offering his room. But Jean’s room is . . . daunting. Nothing would happen and probably they’ve been cold with each other for so long now that no one would talk if they saw but . . . it just brings back too many memories. So, he shakes his head.

“Let’s go for a drink,” he offers instead, the idea popping into his mind suddenly. He doesn’t like to feel out of control at all, but maybe with some alcohol in their systems they’ll be loose enough to actually talk. “How about Lucy’s?” It’s not a tavern frequented by very many soldiers, and it tends to be quieter, so they could actually hear each other.

Jean raises an eyebrow. “That’s a bit of a walk, isn’t it?”

Armin shrugs. “It’s a nice night, I need the air.”

He holds his breath as Jean considers. Finally, he sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “Let me put on civilian clothes if we’re going to Lucy’s.”

“Oh, right. I should do that too,” Armin looks down at his uniform jacket sheepishly. “I’ll meet you outside HQ in ten minutes.”

“Fair,” Jean replies, then slams the door in his face.

Armin tries not to think too much about his clothes as he changes. He does give himself a quick glance in the mirror though, washing his face of any evidence that he’d cried in front of Annie earlier and running a comb through his short hair. He’d started cutting it within the last year because it was more practical, but he also noticed the urge to cut it hit him just as Eren was seeming to grow more and more unkempt. He also doesn’t want to think too hard about the potential symbolism there.

Before he leaves, he sticks the seashell back in its usual place inside his mattress, for safe keeping.

All told, he’s out the door and outside HQ in the allotted time. Jean is already waiting for him, wearing his usual dark coat, vest, jacket, and wide-brimmed hat, scuffing the cobblestones with his toes. When he gets closer, Armin notices that Jean’s hair looks a little neater, like he combed it a bit too. _Don’t read anything into it. If you go out, you clean up. Just like you did._

“So,” Jean begins as they set off together into the breezy evening. “What is it that you want to talk to me about far away from prying ears? Or are we still too close to the barracks?”

Armin shakes his head. Typical Jean to just try to jump right into it. “Can’t you be patient?”

“Hey, you of all people should know I’m very patient.”

Armin doesn’t like that they’re barely a few streets out from HQ and Jean is already alluding to their personal history. He’d thought they were making it through with an unofficial ban on that topic.

Jean sighs. “Forget it. I only meant; it makes me nervous to go into this blind when I have no idea what’s on your mind.”

That softens Armin, just a little bit. But he doesn’t want to confront Jean in the street. “It’s . . . about, um, Li . . . Liberio.”

It’s not a lie, exactly. Any discussion they have about Jean wanting to leave will have to involve what happened across the ocean. Now that he’s out here in the comparative openness of the city, he feels a little calmer. Maybe he can just talk to Jean, like they used to, convince him to stay with logical arguments. Maybe he should think of this as a business meeting between two colleagues with similar goals in mind. After all, Armin doesn’t want a repeat of Liberio either, and Jean is in a much better position to prevent that if he’s still in the military.

“Ah, okay.” Jean seems deflated too. “So, you’re secreting me away so we don’t deflate morale.”

Armin winces. Jean has always been good at reading him. But he doesn’t sound mad, so Armin decides to try a bit of honesty. “Yeah, kinda . . .”

“Fair enough.”

They walk a little way in silence, but it’s not uncomfortable. Armin knows they’re both thinking. That’s one thing he’s always liked about Jean; he really does think.

As they get further from the military district and more into the civilian part of town, they start running into more people. Many of them do not look like they’re headed for a great night out, however; they’re huddling on corners, speaking in low voices, ducking into houses in twos and threes as they dart looks over their shoulders. The energy makes Armin incredibly nervous. These are unhappy people. Yeagerists? He’s not sure, but he’s definitely glad he’s not wearing a uniform.

Once in Lucy’s, a small but pleasant hole in the wall in Mitras’ merchant district, the atmosphere relaxes somewhat. The few patrons gathered in the dimly lit common room are here to try to have a good time, or at least to get away from whatever is brewing out in the streets. Jean and Armin order drinks and settle into a small table near the stairs up to the private rooms, where Armin tries to mentally refocus on what he came here to do.

Jean has other ideas though. “Fuck, this city is tense,” he murmurs, glancing around at the other patrons. “I swear it’s worse than back when Erwin staged his coup.”

“When _we_ staged a coup,” Armin reminds him, also careful to keep his voice low.

“Yeah, exactly.” Jean knocks back a swig of beer before continuing, “I know what it feels like when a city is on the hunt for you and this is pretty much it.”

Armin nods. Yes, Jean’s put his finger exactly on it.

“It probably doesn’t help that Historia’s been out of the public eye for several months now.”

Jean rubs his beard. “Shit, yeah. It’s awful what they’ve done to her, isn’t it? And fuck, no one seems all that excited by the prospect of an heir either.”

Armin shudders and shakes his head.

“We’re never on the right side, are we?” Jean is eyeing him now, pinning Armin with his sharp gaze. “It’s not exactly what I planned when I enlisted ages ago, but you must be used to it. Unless . . .”

“I’m not a ‘Yeagerist’!” Armin sputters, indignant. “I’m Eren’s friend, yes, but I’m not—” He stops himself. Where had this vehemence come from? He drops his head into his hands. “I don’t . . . agree with what he did.”

After a moment, he feels Jean’s hand on his shoulder. The touch is brief, careful, nothing that crosses any of the boundaries he’s spent the last several years erecting between the two of them, but it’s the first time someone has touched him at all in ages, and it awakes a craving in him that’s intensely terrifying.

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Armin looks up and Jean’s usually fierce expression is soft and open; he can’t help but respond.

“Yes.” It doesn’t even feel like a lie. “I’m so worried about him. He was being so secretive, but when he disappeared . . . Mikasa was inconsolable for the first few weeks, you remember. She wanted to go after him right then, but I asked . . . shit, I told her maybe we should try to trust him!” He cringes when he remembers that moment, and rushes to explain, “He has his father’s memories, he sees things sometimes, and I thought, ‘Maybe he knows what he’s doing.’ But then we got the letter.”

Jean’s face darkens. “He abused all of our trusts.”

Armin takes a sip of his beer, just to give his hands something to do. It’s not great—not that he’s ever really _liked_ beer, but this is pretty watery comparatively. Still, he drinks a bit more to put off speaking. Every time he thinks over what happened with Eren, he keeps coming back to that moment when Mikasa suggested they go and he said, “Let’s trust him.” It’s a punch in the gut.

“It’s not your fault, Armin,” Jean says even more softly. Armin closes his eyes. How can Jean still know what’s on his mind before he does? It’s glorious and appalling all at the same time. “You can’t take his shitty actions on yourself.”

“But I can take on my shitty actions! My bad decisions!” He catches his volume rising, and quickly stifles it, continues in a mumble, “And worse, I find myself still wanting to trust him, even after everything he’s put me through . . . put us through. Even when he . . . when he laughed about Sasha . . . I thought, ‘He’s hysterical, he’s not in his right mind.’ No one in their right mind . . . would l-laugh.”

Jean reaches out a hesitant hand like he’s going to touch him again. Armin wants it, he wants it absurdly badly, but he knows he’ll start crying for real if he lets that touch happen right now. So, he drinks again, leaning his shoulder away. The bad taste steadies him somewhat, reminds him why he’s here. He shouldn’t be ragging on Eren right now, expressing his own doubts. He’s supposed to be convincing Jean to stay. He should talk about why he’s planning to stay . . . well, but he can’t leave, so how effective would that kind of argument be?

The realization drops on him like one of Eren’s crystal battering rams.

He can’t leave.

He’s known this, of course, it is obvious. Armin can’t leave the military, even if he wants to. He has a titan. Unless he runs away like the First King, finds some secluded hideout for years to come, he is utterly stuck. And Jean’s freedom to just leave whenever he’s decided he’s had enough and continue his life makes him so angry.

Jean is watching him with that concerned expression too, like he’s open to being Armin’s friend still, like he wants to help him. Well, if he cares so much, he should stay. All this sad little conversation has reminded Armin of is just how pathetically desperate he is for some kind of company, and he has to face it; Jean has always been the person who understands him best, as well as the person he finds most interesting to talk to. If Jean goes, all hope for any meaningful connection is gone. Sure, he’ll still have Mikasa, but Eren is what bound them together in the first place, and they don’t really talk so much as they address each other’s concerns. Mikasa protects him and Armin reassures her when she’s worried or upset. It’s a horrible revelation, but just knowing that Jean is _there_ and potentially available for him to talk to gives him some relief.

Armin tries to compose himself. He has to get Jean to stay. For his sake, if not Hange’s and Connie’s also. He takes another drink to stall, casting his eyes around the bar as he tries to come up with a strategy. They land on a man and a woman with their arms around each other talking to the bartender. The woman slides over a little purse, and the bartender pulls a key off her ring and hands it to them. Armin turns away then to avoid staring, but he hears the two of them walking about the stairs behind his chair, whispering to each other and giggling.

_If he cares so much . . ._

A dreadful, awful idea pops into Armin’s head. It’s desperate, risky, and if Jean ever finds out about it, he’ll hate Armin forever, but . . .

He tries to subtly sidle his chair a little closer to Jean’s, aware it must look a bit weird after he rejected Jean’s comforting hand. His heart is pounding fifty meters a minute. Can he really do this? Is he really sinking this low?

“I didn’t . . . just w-want to talk you about Eren though,” he begins, willing himself to look at Jean but finding it utterly impossible. He stares at the foam in his half-drunk mug instead. “I was . . . realizing that, um, we haven’t really talked in a while.”

“Well-spotted,” Jean snorts, drinking from his own mug again. Armin can feel him stiffen beside him though, alert.

He forces a chuckle. “I know, guilty. The truth is . . . um . . . I kinda . . . miss . . . stuff.”

There’s a pause and then Jean repeats, “Stuff.”

Armin winces. But Jean doesn’t continue, he waits for more. _He’s really going to force me to say it isn’t he? I guess it’s what I deserve._

“Um, like. I know I pushed you away.” Jean snorts again, but Armin takes a deep breath and continues, “And I’m sorry about that, I really am. But I was thinking . . . we always work well together, don’t we? Especially in _that_ way . . . oh, well, I mean, if you’re with someone right now, then I’m sorry, really, don’t think anything of it!”

Really, he should have thought of that sooner, actually, that Jean might have met someone. Maybe a nice civilian, a woman perhaps, someone more sensible and suitable who could take him away from this horrible life of war and—

“There isn’t anyone,” Jean says, making Armin finally look up. The wonderful and terrible thing about Jean’s face is that it’s pretty much always easy to read. Right now he’s frowning, so he’s annoyed, but there’s a kind of dip in his eyebrows that says he’s also worried and hesitant. And there, in his eyes, there’s a kind of hunger that Armin recognizes, because it’s the one he felt himself when Jean put his hand on his shoulder earlier.

An opening.

“Oh, well. Then . . . if there really isn’t anyone else . . .”

“You shouldn’t have assumed though,” Jean adds, picking up his tankard again. “I’m a catch. Maybe I had other plans for tonight, plans to find someone.”

_Ah. I’ve already caught him_. Armin doesn’t just feel relieved by the realization though. He’s also nervous, scared, excited, and . . . gratified? Even after all this time, Jean still wants him.

_Does he still love me?_

Armin shoves that thought aside. Love isn’t going to enter into this. He’s trying to give Jean something he can’t have if he leaves the military, and he’s going to let him weigh that into his calculations without ever saying a word about what he overheard.

“Well, if you have other plans, you should get to them.” Armin tries to keep meeting Jean’s gaze like he has nothing to hide. “But if you’re, um, interested, I think we should, er . . . get a room.”

Armin’s voice is hoarse. He hopes it comes across as desire. Well, it partially is desire, so that’s not really a lie, is it? His eyes slide to the line of Jean’s neck above his collar, and he lets himself imagine kissing it for the first time in a long time. There’s an answering twinge of arousal in his stomach.

“Shit,” Jean grunts, never very good at keeping his composure. He downs the last of his beer and then rounds on Armin. “Alright. What’s up? What happened to not wanting to ‘hurt me,’ hm?”

“Circumstances . . . change. What happened across the sea it . . . it made me rethink some things. I realized I was, um, well, that I wanted, er connection.” He stops there, desperately hoping Jean fills in the blanks. He doesn’t want to actually drag Sasha’s name into this, that would be so disrespectful. Even though he’s basically stopped just barely short of that now. He’s dirty, he’s awful; but Hange also needs Jean, right? So, he’s not being entirely selfish. And maybe saying it this way will get Jean to think about the connections he does have here with the Survey Corps.

Jean is tapping his fingers on the table, staring off into the middle distance. He looks wan and pale, all of a sudden. Is he thinking about Sasha? About Eren? About the choice that lies before him?

_Choose me. _

Armin takes a risk and gently presses his knee against Jean’s thigh under the table. It’s warm. Maybe soon he’ll be touching it with his hands . . . the thought makes his chest tight.

“I . . . fuck it, let’s do it.” Jean’s voice cracks when he speaks. “I’m probably some kind of idiot but . . . fuck. Why not? It’s been a while since I got laid, I guess.”

Jean means that as a cold rebuke, but he’s terrible at those. Armin knows he wants it now, and he’s so flooded with relief he actually smiles. Jean blinks at him, then gives him a nervous, lopsided smile back.

“I’ll go get the key,” Armin says, hastily standing up before Jean changes his mind. “Then come up and join me in a few minutes. I’ll leave the door cracked for you.”

They do still need to be discreet. Besides, he reassures himself that this gives Jean an extra opportunity out. If he doesn’t actually want to go through with this, he doesn’t have to come up.

Oh Walls, Armin hopes he comes up.

“Alright.”

Armin goes to the bartender and tells her he wants a room. She hands him a key before he can come up with a story for why he might not want to stay at home tonight, apparently satisfied to just take his money. Well, he likes that she doesn’t ask questions, but he also hopes she’s not shrewd enough to keep an eye on him or notice Jean sneak up after him.

On his way to the stairs, he catches Jean’s eye. Neither of them makes any further signals at each other, and Armin forces himself to take the steps at a sedate rate; no attention, he better attract absolutely no attention.

The room turns out to be spartan, but clean. There’s a basin for washing, a chamber pot, and a neat little bed tucked into one corner. And a crystal light . . . well, every place has those these days. Armin quickly busies himself with the drawing the curtain over the glass window. Memories of their squabbles about the window in their Mitras palace room come his mind, and he smiles fondly. Those weren’t easy times, but they felt a bit easier than this desperate mess.

He sits on the bed to wait, fingers twisting over each other in his lap. He wishes he’d brought the seashell, that always helps him ground himself, focus. He doesn’t want any of his weird splitting mind tricks right now, not when he needs his wits about him.

_Please let Jean come._

It’s a bit hard to fathom that when he left HQ earlier this evening, he was completely set on avoiding anything to do with their former relationship. Now he’s sitting on a bed in an inn, waiting to have sex. It abruptly strikes him that they’re not the same people as the last time they got up to this. It has been three years, and in the intervening time Armin hasn’t had any sex at all. And, comparatively, they only had two months together as teenagers, sneaking around and frotting in haystacks. No, that’s not true, they did more than frot. But it has been a long time, and they’re definitely both physically different from the last time. For starters, Jean is a lot taller . . . and Armin is a titan shifter. That puts some limits on what they can do. And since becoming a shifter he’s had some weird experiences with his body, of feeling out of control or distanced from it. On a fundamental note, can he even let go enough to come with another person? Even if that person is Jean . . .

And then, as if summoned, the door squeaks open and Jean enters the room.

Armin’s breath catches when the lock clicks behind Jean. They’re here, this is happening. He glances at Jean’s face; the other man looks as nervous as he feels. Doubt enters his mind. Should he manipulate Jean this way? Well, is it really all that bad if he’s getting something he wants too? Just to be sure, he decides to give Jean another chance to bolt before they start something they might both come to regret.

“Are you sure about this?” He hates the little tremble in his voice. He wants to sound confident, like _he_ definitely is sure about it.

“Yes.” Jean is a little breathless too, and he’s staring at Armin, transfixed, like if he looks away, he’ll disappear. It’s the intense desire focused on him more than the word itself the assures Armin Jean _wants _to be here. Maybe it’s against his better judgment, but he wants it.

Carrying that certainty in his mind, he stands up to meet Jean in the center of the room, where he hooks his fingers into Jean’s belt loops and stands on his toes to kiss him.

For a brief second, he’s worried that he’s forgotten how to do it, but as soon as their lips connect his old instincts take over. He tries not to be frantic, tries to let them figure this out together, moving his lips slowly and deliberately. Then Jean starts to tremble, and it flips some kind of switch in Armin’s brain. Fuck, Jean _wants_ this. He knew that already, but now that he feels it physically in the way Jean’s hands come either side of his face, shaking even as they hold him in that kiss. That small gesture makes it even more arousing.

Following his base impulses, Armin uses Jean’s belt loops to steer him toward a wall, gently pushing his tongue into Jean’s mouth as he does so.

Jean moans. It’s deep and guttural, yet desperate. Armin feels his dick hardening already in response, but still he tries to keep this slower pace. It’s a bit surprising how natural it feels to kiss Jean, even when he’s several inches taller than he used to be, he has a bit of a beard, and his breath still tastes a little like beer. There’s something underneath it all that’s still _Jean_; these are still Jean’s long fingers grazing the nape of his neck, still his soft mouth that starts kissing down his chin to his jaw, still his gasps that sound close to Armin’s ear.

The crashing waves of want are almost too much for Armin to handle. Suddenly, it’s imperative that he’s as close to Jean as possible, that he never stop touching Jean at all. He begins fumbling with Jean’s vest buttons while continuing to kiss him. Then he feels Jean’s fingers lightly graze his hips, untucking his shirt. He gasps into Jean’s mouth when hands slide along his sides and start roaming his back. _Skin_. Jean is touching his skin. Walls, it feels so impossibly good. How can such simple touches be so amazing? He must return this favor.

With Jean’s vest undone, Armin begins working on Jean’s shirt, pulling back his collar. His mouth drifts to Jean’s neck, kissing and sucking softly. Jean groans and clutches his back in response; clutches, not scratches, Armin notices. Some part of Jean must remember that he’s a titan now. Armin chases that thought away—no, he really doesn’t want to think of himself as a titan body at the moment, if he can help it. So, he puts all of his concentration into kissing Jean’s neck, his hands slipping into Jean’s unbuttoned shirt to flick his nipples. The resulting gasp is definitely distracting enough.

“I-is it alright?” Jean pants out, even as his hands start drifting back towards Armin’s hips. Armin doesn’t know how to respond to this besides arcing into Jean’s touch and pressing their erections together. Fuck, Jean is hard. He’s hard too, but feeling how turned on Jean is . . . is wow. Armin moans and frots against Jean a bit, burying his face back in his collarbone.

“Yes,” he breathes, shuddering with Jean at the intensity of the contact. “Please, just . . . l-let’s not talk . . . for a moment. Please.”

He doesn’t want to talk right now, doesn’t want to question what he’s doing. He just feels so good in Jean’s arms, so good kissing him and drowning himself in his smell, that he doesn’t want to interrupt it. He wants to help Jean come. He wants to come. He wants them to keep touching each other until this happens—for once, his desires are no more complicated than that and he’s reveling in it.

Armin lets his hands wander according to their own inclination while he kisses Jean’s mouth again. Unsurprisingly, they end up on Jean’s ass. He grabs there, pulling Jean as close as possible. Meanwhile, Jean’s fingers start rubbing Armin’s nipples in slow circles. Armin gasps against Jean’s mouth, breaking the kiss to moan, “Fuck.” Jean’s hips jump, rubbing their erections together even more. The cycle of reactions starts to build; Armin goes back to kissing Jean, but sloppily now, barely conscious of what he’s doing besides a primal sense of _need_; Armin’s kisses spur Jean to press harder against his nipples; Armin gives an embarrassing whimper and squeezes Jean’s ass, uncaring that his fingers are getting crushed against the wall.

Finally, he can’t stand it anymore, he has to do something to cut this growing tension. He breaks from the kiss to whisper in Jean’s ear. “I . . . I wanna finger you. Can I?”

Jean shudders and drops his head to Armin’s neck. The feel of his warm, labored breath there sends a corresponding shiver down Armin’s spine.

“F-fuck. Fuck, yeah, just . . . it’s dry, can we--?”

Jean sounds so good when he’s so undone. Armin instinctively plants a kiss on his hairline. It’s a bit sweaty already, and he loves the smell. Then he gently nudges Jean’s head away from his shoulder and offers up one of his hands. Jean looks at the proffered fingers with hooded eyes, his face flushed with want. Then he gently takes one finger into his warm, wet mouth.

It’s all Armin can do to keep breathing. He watches Jean’s eyes slide closed, feelings him moan around his finger, then sighs himself when Jean’s tongue presses against his finger pad. Fuck, he’s so hard he might well explode right now, watching this, _feeling _this. Jean takes each finger of his hand into him with deliberate care, thoroughly coating all of them. And then, he drops them and locks eyes with Armin.

“Okay, fuck me.”

It takes Armin a second to process this request, he’s so struck by how beautiful Jean looks right now, mouth slightly open, eyes full of challenge and desire. And then he’s scrabbling with Jean’s pants, undoing them enough to push them and Jean’s underwear to somewhere around his knees, and then pressing his forefinger against Jean’s asshole.

Jean’s mouth gapes, his head lolls back against the wall. Armin kisses desperately as his pulse, nipping and biting a bit to distract him from the push. But it slips in pretty easily. And Armin finds he doesn’t care if his finger comes out a bit messy at the end of it, it’s all worth it for that look on his face.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Jean cries. Armin breathes a “shhh” against his neck, remembering that they’re in an inn. He rubs against Jean now, so lost in this moment that he can’t help himself. Jean apparently decides to exact his revenge for Armin’s condescension by undoing his own pants enough to stick his hand inside and start stroking his dick.

“Ah!” Armin can’t help his own cry, but Jean still takes the opportunity to “shhh” him back. The noise turns into a groan when Armin rocks his finger deeper inside him.

Jean’s pace is slow as he starts jerking Amrin off, but it’s already putting him so close to the edge. He has the briefest flash of the thought, _I don’t want to come yet. I want to stay here forever. _But no, fuck, it will feel so good to come, to feel Jean come underneath him. He gulps down a few breathes and then manages, “Can . . . can I . . . ah! Add another one?”

Too lost in pleasure for words, Jean nods. Armin doesn’t need to be told twice. He presses another finger in, gasping in sympathy as Jean arches against him. He gives Jean a moment to adjust to the new intrusion before pushing deeper in, searching for his particular spot. When he finds it, Jean stifles himself by biting Armin’s shirt . . . but not the skin underneath. He’s being really careful.

He begins stroking Armin faster, until Armin’s vision is essentially a blur, his world reduced to finger-fucking Jean and Jean’s careful fingers squeezing his dick. Their mouths meet but they’re beyond the ability to kiss, just putting their faces together to connect in as many ways as possible.

Suddenly, Jean’s voice breaks through his pleasure fog.

“An—another! Please, Ar—fuck!”

Groaning, Armin kisses his chest and shifts to slide in his third finger, which goes in easily this time.

“Ar-Armin!” Jean gasps out. “Fuck, like that, just like that!”

“Ahhh!” Hearing his name tumbling from Jean’s mouth does funny things to his stomach. He shouldn’t like it, right? It’s a sign that there’s something wrong about this sex, that it means something more that helping each other get off, than keeping Jean here in the military as revenge or because they need him . . . but Armin’s body responds, he wants to hear it again. In fact, if it feels so good to hear it, maybe if he . . . he opens his mouth to try, but it just comes out as a moan. He tilts his head up to kiss Jean more though, to try to communicate in some way what all this means to him.

_So fucking good! Keep going, keep going!_

Jean seems to get it, as he whimpers against Armin’s lips. The rate of his stroking increases. Armin tenses, feeling a peculiar kind of pressure building inside of him. He’s going to come. He’s going to come as Jean touches him, into Jean’s hand.

He breaks the kiss.

“Oh no,” he mumbles, Jean’s breath hot against his lips, his sweaty hair sticking to Jean’s forehead. “Ohnonononono!”

Armin wraps his free hand around Jean’s dick while he pushes as far as he can into his ass. The angle twinges his wrist a bit but—

“FUCK!” Jean calls out. Armin doesn’t even have the presence of mind to shush him at this point. “FU-uck. OH, Armin! Shit, yeaaaah!”

Finally, Armin manages to get it out. “Ohnono. Shit! Je-aaan!” Then it’s happening, he’s overwhelmed, his bodily reactions are slipping beyond his control. “Oh NO!” He bites down on Jean’s neck, shuddering as his body gives out, coming incredibly intensely, cum splattering across Jean’s stomach. Jean comes just a few seconds after, grunting and shaking, their orgasms seeming to bleed together and run into each other, extending the waves of pleasure. And then Armin collapses.

He leans right into Jean, barely finding the energy to remove his fingers from Jean’s ass. Then he has to cling—not just because he’s not sure he can stand, but because he has to be close to his body right now to hold onto some of the connection they just experienced, to fight off this horrible emptiness that’s coming for him . . .

Armin isn’t sure how long they stand there, breathing together, but suddenly he’s aware of Jean’s lips on his temple, his hands around his waist. He can’t face what’s happened here yet, he realizes. There are going to be consequences, but right now he just wants to feel . . . loved.

He feels Jean take a meaningful breath, perhaps in order to say something. Abruptly, Armin breaks their hug, but he pulls Jean with him, directing him to the bed. Then he falls onto it and tugs Jean on top of him; the bed is too small to do otherwise, but also Armin wants it this way. Jean with him, his face in his neck. Armin closes his eyes then, silently forbidding Jean to talk.

_Please, let’s just wait till the morning. Let’s just have this right now._

And apparently, Jean decides to be amenable, because the world quietly dissolves into darkness.

* * *

Armin comes back to consciousness slowly, aware of the world around him in fits and starts. There’s grey light leaking out from under the curtains, spinning motes of dust floating in the beams; there’s soft fabric underneath his cheek, the excited chirping of birds outside; and there’s a heavy, warm weight on top of him, another human body breathing slowly with sleep.

Jean.

He contemplates the top of Jean’s head, ashy hair mussed in every which way. From this angle he can just make out his long nose, the shadow of his eyelashes. He’s so still and peaceful, so comfortable with his head on Armin’s shoulder and his arm and leg thrown carelessly over his body.

They fell asleep right after the sex, Armin realizes, clothes still half-on, hands and bodies still sticky with their cum. That’s going to be gross to wash off later. There’s a basin though, and a pitcher of water. He remembers there’s also a chamber pot tucked discretely in one corner; fortunate because he’s realizing now he desperately needs to relieve himself.

But that would mean waking up Jean.

And when he wakes Jean, Jean will get up. They’ll disconnect again, go their separate ways for the day. And Armin will feel so lonely until the next time he talks Jean into sex. Maybe the next time, they won’t even have the luxury of sleeping together in the morning. A long time ago, Jean told him that sharing a bed was his favorite part of their trysts. Armin understands why now; being so close eases some kind of ache within him, and he wishes there was some kind of titan power to pause time, to get the most out of this moment. Though maybe the fact that it’s fleeting is what makes it so sweet.

Besides, some of the joy is sucked out of waking up next to Jean by knowing that he’s tricked him into this, that he only initiated it to keep Jean in a position he has clearly come to hate. Maybe he should stop now, quit while he’s ahead. There were reasons why he pushed Jean away, and they’re still important. They can have sex, but not love, not if he wants to preserve Jean from his eventual death. And haven’t they all suffered enough after Sasha . . .

Armin blinks back yet more tears. Walls, when are they going to stop? Why can’t he keep it together?

When he raises a hand to wipe them away, Jean stirs. The moment is abruptly broken. It’s now imperative that Jean not see him with watery eyes, so Armin starts to frantically wiggle out from under him. “I gotta, uh, I need to go.”

“Wuh—oh,” Jean sits up pretty quickly considering he’s obviously still dazed with sleep. Armin thanks him and almost runs to the corner with the chamber pot. When he’s finished, he washes his hands thoroughly with the water and soap, wiping away the residue of last night, and then he splashes his face for good measure. No more tears.

“Rushing off?” Jean’s sullen voice comes from the bed. “You’ll need more soap than that to get rid of my smell.”

“Oh . . . no . . . I just . . . like to be clean. Er, it’s healthier.” Armin shrugs and offers what he hopes is an apologetic smile.

Jean’s frown melts into a sheepish expression. He rubs the back of his neck like he always does when nervous. “Oh . . . er, sorry. I assumed.”

“You have a lot of reasons to assume,” Armin says, hating himself with every word. The best lies are hidden in the truth. “But I wasn’t leaving. I just, um, had to . . . make water.” He forces himself to walk across the room and sit on the bed with Jean again. _This is wrong, I shouldn’t lead him on, I should just tell him what is actually bothering me and stop this whole ridiculous charade . . ._

Jean chuckles. “We’re nineteen now, you can say piss.”

“I say . . . p-piss,” Armin winces at how unnatural the word sounds in his mouth. Jean’s grin widens.

“Well, you definitely say worse,” he concedes, eyeing Armin from under his eyelashes. It’s shy and hopeful at the same time. How could Armin have ever said Jean looked like a villain?

He gulps. “Ohh . . . well . . .”

But Jean doesn’t make the first move, he sits waits for Armin to come to him again.

_What are you waiting for?_

Steeling himself, he reaches out to put his hand on Jean’s cheek. “I’m nowhere near as bad as you.” And then he leans in to kiss his mouth.

Jean puts out a hand to stop him and his heart wrenches. “Armin,” he says softly. “Can we talk?”

Armin pulls away abruptly, sitting on the other end of the bed hugging his knees to his chest. “Y-yes.”

“Ah shit, see, that’s what I wanted to talk about; you’re very tense.” He sighs and runs his hand through his hair. Armin braces himself to confess. “Look, I’m sorry about earlier, I don’t mean to pressure you. You can leave if you want.”

Armin blinks. Jean is apologizing . . . to him. _Oh no_.

“That’s . . . you don’t . . .” he splutters.

“Yeah, I’m annoyed you’re always running away and like . . . ah fuck, maybe you’re right and it’s not better to bring up the past right now. We can, um, end it here if you want.” He takes a deep breath and continues, “But yesterday, you . . . you did really want it then, right? I’m not . . . imagining that?”

He seems so worried all of a sudden; Armin feels a laugh bubbling up inside himself at the absurdity of it. “I seduced you, remember?”

A smile quirks the corners of Jean’s mouth. “Seduced is a strong word for what happened down there.”

Armin crawls back to Jean on the bed, relief that he’s not been figured out yet making him a bit lightheaded. “It’s not my fault you’re an easy mark.”

Jean scoffs, blushing.

“And,” Armin breathes, face inches from Jean’s own now. In the light of day, he can see small scrapes from the last battle, the very faint dusting of freckles on his nose, heirlooms of summer. It makes him pause, this reminder of the gaping cavern between him and Jean. Even Armin’s old scars healed when he transformed into a titan. He bears no signs of the punishing life he leads on his body, and it’s killing him.

“And?” Jean prompts, his forehead brushing against Armin’s. The contact brings him back to the present, to his plan. And to the crackling desire he feels for Jean.

“And . . . the way you kissed last night . . . made it pretty obvious that you’re kinda, uh, desperate for me.”

Jean’s hands come to either side of this face then, pulling him into a kiss. Maybe they’ve been talking enough to clear their morning breath, or maybe Armin just doesn’t care, because the moment of reconnection feels so good. Jean doesn’t kiss roughly, but it’s not soft either; it’s enough to make Armin’s stomach swoop, to make him press closer to Jean. And then they break apart.

“You want it too,” Jean says, voice a little hoarse. It doesn’t come out like a question, but Armin hears one in there.

“Yes,” he answers, climbing onto Jean’s lap and kissing him again. His hands go to Jean’s hair and he slides his tongue into Jean’s mouth, eliciting a deep groan from the other man. And then Armin loses himself.

It’s not like when he disconnects from his body; he can feel every place Jean touches with his fingers, everywhere his mouth wanders. But time seems to melt, and there’s only this moment, here and now, where Armin needs Jean, needs to feel as close as possible. He frots against Jean; he bites his neck; he strips his rumpled shirt and scratches his back; he hears him groan, moan, and whimper.

He’s not sure of the exact order of events, but somehow, they both end up naked with Armin sitting in Jean’s lap while Jean holds him from behind. The warmth of Jean’s skin on his back burns in the best way, his heavy smell overwhelms Armin with arousal. He’s sucking carefully on the place where Armin’s neck meets his shoulder, whimpering when Armin squirms and bumps his erection. One of his hands rubs Armin’s nipples in slow circles, going back and forth between them. His other hand strokes Armin’s cock slowly with shaking fingers.

Armin arcs into it, mouth open and gasping. He doesn’t know what inane things he might be babbling, what embarrassing noises he’s probably making; his desperation to feel as much of Jean as possible takes up all of his concentration. He _needs _this. He needs Jean to be the one doing this to him, the one murmuring nonsense against the skin of his neck.

“Y-you sound so good, ah! Ar-min! So, so good, fuck!”

Armin turns his head to kiss him then, so messily saliva drips down his chin. It’s the only way he can manage at the moment to tell Jean he also sounds so good, that he feels so good; that he misses him, that he doesn’t want this to end, ever; he wants it to go on and on, because the tension that’s building up inside of him is beyond anything he’s ever felt before . . . and it’s so good to be this tense with Jean . . . because of Jean . . .

Armin yanks away from the kiss abruptly, his body wracked with such an intense orgasm there are tears in his eyes. “NO! Sh-it!” he gasps out. No! He didn’t want to come yet, he wanted to keep teetering on that edge with Jean, so close to him, so connected . . .

. . . the tears don’t stop. Even as Armin gasps down air and his spasms calm down, the tears just keep streaming down his face. “Sh-i-it!” he sobs.

This is worst feeling he’s ever had in his life.

Jean keeps his slack body in his arms, holds him close. Armin can feel the tension in his limbs, the fear. He’s freaked out. But Armin can’t even try to reassure him because he’s crying harder than he’s cried in years, his whole body shaking. He’s completely out of control and utterly spent and empty from the sex, and it’s so awful that at this moment, he wishes he could die.

“I’m so-orry,” is all he can say when he manages to speak. “I’m so . . . I . . . I’m sorry!”

Jean brushes his sweaty hair away from his face and kisses his forehead. That just starts more tears, boiling hot down his cheeks. He sniffles and whines like a child. Fuck, he’s not a child!

He uses what energy he has in his limbs to shove away from Jean, scrambling backwards to the other side of the bed. Jean lets him go, worry and confusion warring on his face.

“I d-don’t know what’s happening,” Armin manages. “B-b-but I think you should go. We sh-should stop.”

“Armin,” Jean says, reaching out for him but then obviously thinking better of it. Armin winces when he sees his cum on Jean’s outstretched fingers. Jean follows his gaze, curses, and produces a handkerchief from the pile of his clothes on the floor. As he wipes he starts talking again. “Armin, I . . . I can go, but . . . something is wrong, and I think you should talk . . . we should talk . . . please?”

Armin closes his eyes just to put a wall between him and Jean. He needs more walls right now.

“N-no! It’s point . . . pointless to talk.”

“Okay, but—”

Why is Jean still hesitating? Why can’t he see it’s over? Well, Armin can make him see.

“I . . . I seduced you because I . . . overheard you talk to Hange and I . . . know you want to leave. I didn’t . . . want you to go because . . . I’m selfish and I c-can’t leave, so . . . I tricked you into sleeping with me so . . . you might reconsider.”

Armin braces himself to hear Jean shout or storm off. But there’s only silence, not even the rustle of Jean shifting on the bed.

After a few moments, he cracks open a cautious eye. Jean is still sitting across from him. He’s frowning, but he really is still there.

“Don’t . . . don’t you hate me?” Armin can’t help but ask. “Don’t you want to leave?”

Finally, Jean moves, turning away from Armin. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m thinking . . . I’m . . .” he takes a deep breath. “Shit. No, I’m not happy you did this . . . but . . . Walls, why couldn’t you just fucking talk to me?”

Armin fumbles over the side of the bed for his pants pocket, pulling out his own handkerchief and wiping his face to try to compose himself. He still shakes, but somehow now that his secret out, he feels somewhat calmer. _Probably because it literally can’t get any worse now. _“When I asked you to come here that’s wh-what I planned,” he sniffs. “But we were talking about Eren and I realized . . . I felt so stuck in this body and then I didn’t want to argue, I just wanted to give you a reason to stay.”

Jean rubs his hands on his face. Now he looks more tired than angry. “Armin . . . fuck, I knew there was something wrong. Why would you suddenly talk to me so openly and, why would you acknowledge our past and ask to fuck in an unknown place? I’m not stupid.”

“I know,” Armin says, not thinking for once. “It’s why I like you.”

He jumps when Jean clamps his hands. “Exactly! That’s what I can’t get over. You fucking like me. Well, guess what? I like you too. I still love you, in fact.” He says it so grudgingly that Armin can barely process the admission. “I just don’t get why you have to sneak around and lie to yourself about it all the time, like . . . if you care about me and I care about you, so much so that you want to have sex with me, what’s the point of pretending otherwise? Doesn’t it just . . . hurt?”

“Not as much as losing—,”

“Bullshit!” Jean rounds on him, glaring. “Fuck, I’ve already lost you, years ago. Let me tell you something about hurt, Armin. You kicked me away when you still wanted me, you patronized me and left me out dry. And then, on top of it all, I had to watch you be sad, trailing after Eren like a ghost. I just . . . I don’t . . . get it.”

Armin shakes his head. Jean’s right, he wants him still. But he’s being dismissive of the stakes.

“I don’t wanna bury . . . or be buried . . .”

Jean curses and stands up. He begins to pace. Armin is reminded of a night two years ago, when Jean begged him to stay.

“Fuck. First, don’t use Sash—what happened then as a defense! That’s low. Second, not to assume, but you’d be fucking sad if I died anyway! What, exactly, are you sparing yourself from? Support? Love? Amazing sex?”

Armin shakes his head as if he can hold Jean’s words back that way. “I don’t . . . deserve those things.” The words surprise him, even though they’re coming out his mouth. His deepest, darkest thoughts spilled to Jean. Old habits die hard, apparently. “I’m a monster, I’m cursed. I can’t even stop Eren . . . my friend . . . I didn’t even try. That’s why you want to leave, right? Liberio.”

Jean stops in his tracks, jaw working. Armin can tell he’s holding back whatever it was his first impulse to say, and feels a rush of warmth and sympathy for him, as well as shame. _He’s managing me. I’m leaning on him after using him. That’s another reason I’m a monster._ Then Jean comes to the side of the bed, sitting on the floor and looking at up him.

“Maybe you can’t hear this right now, but you’re not a monster. And you’re not responsible for what Eren does. If he abuses your trust, that’s on him.”

“Just like it’s on me if I abuse _your_ trust!” Armin cries, suddenly overwhelmed by Jean’s kindness. “I _used _you!”

“Yes,” Jean concedes, frown returning, words clipped. “You should have just talked to me, told me what you wanted. I would have wanted it too. And you should have told me how you felt stuck. You can talk to me, Armin. And shit, you know what? You are talking to me right now. Eren . . . he hasn’t said anything about Liberio, he never warned anyone what he was doing. _You_ can say you’re sorry when you hurt people, you can open up.”

“Only when it’s too late!”

Armin is surprised to see Jean shrug. “In this case, it’s not too late. I still want you. If you’re honest with me in the future, obviously.”

“Why?” Armin stares down at him with incredulity. “Are you that lonely?”

“Is it so hard to believe that you’re someone I really fucking wanna talk to? Even these past two years, when you were so cold, sometimes we could share things; jokes, hope . . . sadness. You see things other people don’t, you see the big picture in a way that even I can’t, and . . . you care. Liberio hurt you too, and everything that happened in Shiganshina . . . you try to be cold, but you can’t. And, honestly, I love to fuck you.”

That last one surprises a watery chuckle out of Armin. Jean smiles tentatively back and holds out a hand. Hesitantly, Armin takes it. It’s a bit clammy, but it’s still nice to touch someone else.

_This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea. This is a bad idea._

“You’re . . . I love to fuck you too.”

Jean laughs outright, but he still blushes. Armin likes it when he’s shy, he realizes. “I noticed.”

“B-but it’s not just that . . . er, sorry, you’re smart, and a quick thinker, and I was sad that we didn’t talk like we used to, that’s why I didn’t want you to leave . . . but you _are_ leaving . . .” Armin’s throat closes up when he says it. Following an urge he barely understands, he raises Jean’s hand to his face and holds it there.

“Maybe,” Jean says softly, “But probably not.”

“Not because of me!” Armin says immediately, hating the part of himself that secretly hopes it’s the case. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Stop using that word,” Jean snaps. “It’s not about deserving, and it’s not entirely about you. It’s that, after talking with you, I think I’m stuck too. I’ve always been stuck—that’s what I realized when I was standing by the funeral pyres after Trost, that even if I wanted to leave, I had nowhere else to go. And Liberio was . . . awful,” his voice cracks here and Armin squeezes his hand. “I’ve never been on the side delivering that kind of carnage and Eren . . . he forced our hand! And we lost . . . we lost Sasha. Fuck.”

Jean stares into the middle distance, his body frozen. He’s still kind of in shock, Armin sees, stuck back in that moment, when he watched Sasha die. Armin wasn’t there, he was talking with Eren and Hange in the pilot room . . . he can’t imagine what it would have been like to actually witness it.

And somehow, Jean had still protected the Marleyan children Gabi and Falco, managing to take them into custody when the other soldiers wanted to through them out the airlock. Armin realizes he’s proud of him, even though he wouldn’t have expected anything else from him. Jean always tries to save people, for better or worse.

Then Jean shakes himself. “A-anyway. Point is, the only people I care about are all here, and they’re about to be in great danger. I just . . . I know something is going to happen, Armin. I know it in my gut.”

Armin nods. They’ve lived through a coup before, they can all see the signs. “We should talk to Mikasa and Connie. We need to come up with a plan. And then we’ll talk to Eren.”

Jean leans his head on Armin’s knee. “Fuck. I’m so tired.” Then he looks up at Armin. “I bet you are too.”

“I was so angry you were going to leave,” Armin confesses without any heat, his free hand coming up to stroke Jean’s hair. “It didn’t feel fair.”

“It’s not. You’re right. It’s not my fault either, but you’ve been dealt a really shitty hand.”

Jean’s agreement soothes Armin a little bit. He’s not crazy for feeling stuck. Walls, he’s always felt this way, so much so he’s been trying to find a way out in one way or another his whole life. Out of the walls, out of social expectations for his sexuality . . . and here he is, trapped by a curse put on his ancestors for reasons he can’t even understand. There’s nowhere else for him to run, unless Eren’s right and their freedom lies in the destruction of Marley . . .

_That seems too simple. And isn’t that just trapping ourselves in this story someone created long ago, about how all Eldians are evil, bent on annihilation? _

Armin pushes Jean’s long bangs back from his face, his finger tracing the outline of his closed eye. Jean though, he’s always been kind of free in his own way. He says what he thinks, he does what he believes is right in the moment. He says he feels stuck too, but he obviously doesn’t feel bound to the cycle of violence between Eldians and the rest of the world or he wouldn’t have saved the children who killed one of his closest friends. Armin wants to ask him how he does it, how he manages. _Will you teach me, Jean? I want that kind of freedom too._

What he says instead is, “I love you.”

Jean sits up, startled.

“Did . . . what?”

Armin takes his face in both his hands. “I love you. I’m . . . sorry, it’s not easy for me. I’m really scared. But it’s the truth. And I’m tired of lies.”

And then he kisses him. But he finds he’s glad he managed to say it in words first.

* * *

A week later, deep in a dungeon underneath Shiganshina, Armin rests his head on his folded arms and contemplates what is likely the end of his life. Above him, crashes sound. They’re either being bombed by Marleyan airships or titans are fighting. Or both, come to think of it. Eren has completely betrayed them, apparently deciding to go along with his half-brother’s Eldian euthanasia plan because that’s the ultimate form of freedom.

Death.

Armin tries to understand this perspective, truly, but even now, when his doom is upon him, he finds himself reluctant to accept it. No walls can hold you when you’re dead, he supposes, but he sees just living as the freedom of possibility. Why has Eren given up on this? Has he, really?

Armin sighs and rubs his face. Even after everything Eren has done to him and to humanity more generally, Armin still holds on to some slight hope that there’s a secret plan underneath it all. Would it matter if there is? Eren has been willing to sacrifice everything for it, if that’s the case. Armin may have initially inspired Eren with his book and his talk of the outside world, but somewhere along the way he had learned to hold back. Maybe he was really the weaker of the two of them, in the end, the one who wasn’t able to commit fully to their joint cause.

He pounds his head with his fist. It reminds him of when Eren punched him earlier that day. He’s still angry about that. He’s angrier still about what Eren said to Mikasa, telling her he’d always hated her, that she was a slave because of her bizarre Ackerman connection. He said he was finally free of them, free of the bonds of human connection that kept the two of them chained down.

There was a time when Armin had occasionally felt similarly, when he’d tried to keep himself apart from others. A heretic and a sexual deviant, he’d seen others as a threat. And when he finally had felt love and connection, he’d tried to run from it because he anticipated losing it. Once, he might have understood Eren, but now. . .

Jean, trapped in the cell with him, makes tea for Sasha’s family and Niccolo while Connie paces nearby. Armin feels his heart swell. Here, at the end of all things, they’ve been granted a kettle, and Jean is dolling it out so calmly, for their sake.

Connie stops and abruptly turns to him. “What if you transform here? You could get us out, smash Eren’s face in,” he growls, face an uncharacteristic mask of rage.

Armin shakes his head. “I’d turn you all and this whole city to pulp.”

That sets Connie off on a rant about what a piece of shit Eren has become. Frankly, right now, Armin is partially inclined to agree. He had voiced the idea that he could eat Eren earlier this week . . . but obviously, when the opportunity had arisen to take that chance, he just hadn’t been able to do it. Instead, he’d tried to fight Eren as a human, and had gotten a black eye and a broken nose for his trouble.

Those things never stick these days though.

He catches Jean’s eye. He looks so tired, but he holds up a cup of tea as a question. Armin nods.

Maybe at this point he’d prefer him to just end it for a chance at victory . . .

. . . but then Armin would never be free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made it! . . . five days late, but I made it :D Thanks so much to everyone who read this!
> 
> In my defense, the whole fic is 35 pages longer than I originally planned it to be ^^'
> 
> Well . . . this is a very long chapter lol. I'm pretty happy with it though. The time-skip is straight forward, and the more explicit sex scene is based on a draft I had in my folder for another fic, but it was originally from Jean's POV. I may post it as a bonus somewhere!
> 
> Thanks to twoboys-onesoul.tumblr.com for putting on Jearmin week and Mirandafandomette for beta reading this!! And thanks to all y'all for reading :D I hope you enjoy! And sorry for any remaining typos I really tried to catch them all but there might be some sneakers.


	5. Bonus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bonus excerpt from a draft :) Jean's POV! I guess this is the section that really fulfills the "old works" prompt :)

When Armin propositioned him, Jean wasn’t quite sure what to expect. He’d been so cold when they talked in the tavern, but now, back in Armin’s room (in a basement, away from the others, presumably to contain him if he had a transformation accident), it’s . . . well. Intense. Upon entering the room, Armin had hooked his fingers into Jean’s pants and kissed him full on the mouth. Not quickly or desperately though; slowly, and with a bit of hesitation at first. An unusual combination of directness and uncertainty.

He wasn’t sure what kissing Armin again would feel like either. Of course, he remembered the previous times—they’re burned into his memory—but they were sixteen then. It had been so long, and they had been through so much that surely things would be different . . . but no, the shape of Armin’s lips, the smell of his skin, the taste of his mouth . . . all of these were familiar to Jean, and he kissed back, aching with nostalgia. Armin moaned when Jean puts his hands on either side of his face and pulled him gently closer, and Jean wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or to cry.

It’s never going to be simple with Armin, is it?

Now Armin has him backed up against a wall, the stones cold against his back even through his shirt. His trembling fingers are fumbling with Jean’s vest buttons, but he still kisses slowly. Jean mimics him, untucking his shirt and sliding his hands underneath. Armin can surely feel him shaking. Touching his skin after all these years . . . it does things to his mind. _It’s just skin_, he tries to tell himself, but he can’t stop thinking about how it’s Armin he’s touching, Armin who’s panting against his neck now, kissing and his jawline as he brushes his fingers against Jean’s nipples. It was never this intense before was it? Did the distance create this intensity?

“I-is it really alright?” Jean gasps out, remembering Armin’s extreme reaction to being touched after his initial transformation into a titan. He’d felt so alien in his body, he’d said, so completely out of a control . . .

Armin’s hands slip downward, caressing his abs and skimming his hips. It’s so light but Jean arcs into it, pushing his hips into Armin’s. “Yes. Please,” Armin murmurs kissing his collarbone now. “Please, just . . . let’s not talk . . . for a moment. Please.”

This should be a warning sign for Jean, but the feel of Armin’s mouth on his skin overrides his concerns. He and Armin always talked. They talked so much sometimes they forgot to have sex. Maybe talking had been their sex. But Armin wants cold, functional sex now . . . is this it? It doesn’t feel that way. Jean’s so hard already, all from comparatively light touches. _Because it’s Armin. _Maybe that’s enough, maybe Armin’s right and they don’t have to talk. He nods and kisses Armin on the mouth again. Concern overridden.

Armin’s fingers are drifting again, moving towards his ass. He grasps Jean there and pulls him closer, their erections bumping against each other through their clothes. Meanwhile, his body presses Jean against the wall. Jean groans into Armin’s mouth, his fingers pressing into Armin’s nipples now. Their kiss breaks as Armin is distracted, mouths open against each other and panting. “Fuck,” Armin moans, eyes sliding closed again. He kisses clumsily now, sloppily, as Jean begins to pinch his nipples. One of Armin’s fingers presses against Jean’s hole, teasing the opening.

“I . . . I wanna finger you,” Armin whispers, “Can I?”

Jean drops his head into Armin’s neck, breathing in his heavy salt smell. “F-fuck. Fuck, yeah, just . . . it’s dry, can we--?”

He feels Armin carefully remove his finger, and then he gently nudges Jean’s head from his shoulder, holding his right fingers up in offering. Jean immediately takes one into his mouth and sucks it carefully, coating it with saliva. His eyes close, but he can hear Armin’s heavy breathing as well as feel it on his face. Armin really likes this, he remembers now. He takes in a second finger, moaning a little. Armin lets out a small noise somewhere between a sigh and whimper. Jean runs his tongue carefully along the pads and then sucks, and Armin’s hips jerk up against his. Finally, he takes in a third one, enjoying the sensation of his mouth being full. It reminds him of when he used to suck Armin off . . . he loved that. Shit, he wants to taste Armin now. Will whatever’s happening between them happen again . . . no, no time to think like that. Just be in the moment . . . in the moment. . .

He drops Armin’s fingers from his mouth and says, in a very hoarse voice. “Okay. Fuck me.”

Armin stares at him for a second, face flushed and mouth open and yearning, before quickly scrabbling at Jean’s pants. There’s a press of a something wet against his asshole and then he’s groaning, lolling his head back against the wall.

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He’s fingered himself and been fingered by others in the interim years, but there’s something about having Armin kissing at his neck as he slowly pushes into his ass that puts him on the edge.

Armin is rubbing against him while he fingers him, driving him even more crazy. So, Jean reaches for Armin’s pants, unbuttoning them clumsily, sticking his hand inside. “Yes,” he gasps. “Do that, yes.”

He closes his eyes as Jean first rubs against his dick, then wraps his hand around it, jerking slowly. Armin’s breathing becomes erratic. “Can . . . can I . . . ah! Add another one?”

Jean nods and nips at his neck, then holds himself back. What if he draws blood? Would Armin transform? He opens his mouth to ask but then there’s another finger pushing inside him, filling him up and spreading him out, and it’s all he can do to breathe.

Once he gets used to the second finger, Armin starts pushing deeper, searching for Jean’s prostate. He brushes against and Jean cries out, a startling loud yell from within his chest. Armin insists, pushing at it again. He remembers that Jean likes brief moments of direct contact, and soon Jean is teetering on the edge. He needs Armin to touch his dick though, something Armin doesn’t do yet, although he’s red and gasping now. Instead, he leans his head on Jean’s chest, mouth open, crying out as Jean moves faster.

“An—another,” Jean manages. “Please, Armin!”

Groaning, Armin kisses his chest and shifts to slide in his third finger, which goes in easily this time.

“Ar-Armin!” Jean gasps out. A distant part of his brain registers that he shouldn’t say his name, shouldn’t call for him in this supposedly rational, practical sex. Armin doesn’t object though, he just moans and tilts his head up to kiss Jean, tongue lapping along the roof of his mouth. He presses deeper again, and Jean whimpers into Armin’s mouth.

So close.

He’s stroking Armin incredibly fast now; not because he wants to rush but because he has to do something to express the intensity of this moment, to move his body in some way. Armin breaks the kiss, unable to concentrate.

“Oh no,” he mumbles, breath hot on Jean’s lips, sweaty hair sticking to Jean’s forehead. “Ohnonononono!”

Armin’s about to come, Jean’s realizes, just as Armin’s free hand clumsily finds his own dick while his fingers press deeper inside.

“FUCK!” It’s so overwhelming for Jean, Armin being so close, being all around him, having his face so close to his . . .

And then, “Oh nononononono! Jee-an!” Armin says it so softly, but it’s there too, sitting in between them. But then his volume increases, his “nos” drowning out the name, to the point where his come splashes across Jean’s stomach. It only takes a second for Jean to follow him, crying out as he has crashes over the edge and comes all over Armin’s hand. They shake together in the come down, tears welling at the corners of Jean’s eyes.

Shit.

He feebly raises a hand to dash them away before Armin can see them, since Armin has his head buried in Jean’s shoulder while he gasps for air. He felt so full a moment ago, so full of so many emotions that he couldn’t quite name, but now he’s deflating, an intense loneliness pressing down upon him. He wants to ask Armin what this means, but . . . he braces himself for a wave of coldness, for Armin to push him away and kick him out now that he’s had what he wanted.

Instead, Armin gently removes his fingers from Jean’s ass and guides him to the bed, where flops down, pulling Jean on top of him. His eyes are closed, his body limbless, but he holds Jean loosely in his arms as his breathing slows. Jean blinks at him blearily. What is this? They’re going to cuddle, to sleep together after . . . _no, don’t question right now. Enjoy. Please enjoy this. Look at how softly he sleeps. Don’t you want to sleep here, warm, breathing in his scent . . . please._

Jean closes his eyes to stop them from watering and presses his face into Armin’s chest. He lets sleep take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So I wrote this a month or two ago when I was planning a super long jearmin fic that alternated between Jean and Armin's POVs and covered everything from Jean's past in Trost (I have a very different headcanon than the OVA where Trost is idyllic suburbia for some reason ^^', and I've been itching to write it for ages) to about where this fic ends. One thing I'm a bit unhappy about in this fic is that I didn't really tell the story of Jean and Armin falling in love. It went from like, a moment of early connection to OH we're super into each other, here's our romance haha. The falling in love part was included in the fic this scene was supposed to come from.
> 
> I guess for jearmin week I just took some of the ideas I'd drafted for that fic and kinda distilled them. Armin pushing Jean away and struggling to open up is one constant in my view of jearmin. I think maybe instead of writing the long fic I originally planned a while ago, I'd like to write a four chapter companion story to this one that's from Jean's perspective and includes the falling in love and gives Jean's character growth arc. 
> 
> Anyway, as you can see, there are some detail differences here, like they're in Armin's room in a basement in this one. But I think this still kind of sums up Jean's feelings about what's happening in the sex scene from chapter 4. :) 
> 
> Thanks again for reading!! <3


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